A Way Through The Stars
by Spezialkrafte Unit 1112
Summary: The Dark Lord mentioned in the Prophecy was Voldemort. But the same Prophecy connected Harry with a Galaxy in another dimension. When Harry emerges victorious in one battle, he is taken to that Galaxy to join the war brewing there. Will he win this time? Can he find what he'd never found in the place he left behind? Only time will tell.
1. Chapter 1

**When The Day Is In A Billion Years.**

He slowly made his way to the doorstep. A brief knock later, he found himself engulfed by a mane of red hair. He only managed to cough out, "… Mrs. Weasley, it's great to see you too."

Mrs. Weasley relented from her hug and held him at an arms distance giving a look over. She couldn't help but comment, "Harry! You've filled up… and grown!"

To him, it was screeching at its worst. But he decided that he'd lived through worse and held back from protesting. And, Mrs. Weasley had been kind enough to him when she didn't have to.

Hurried footsteps were heard from the stairs and a few seconds later, Ginny, Ron and Hermione rushed to the kitchen. Ron shouted a question, "Mom, is Harry here? His trunk is upstairs!"

"You should turn around and see for yourself", came the voice of the boy referred to in Ron's words.

"Harry!"

He decided that three different voices screeching was something he definitely did not like. When the three of them stepped closer to him, he gave Ginny a one-armed warm brotherly hug, ignored Ron's attempt at that and shook his hand and scooped Hermione up in a hug that rivalled one of her own in intensity. A scowl briefly passed Ron's face, at Harry's ignoring him, as he twirled Hermione round and round in the small kitchen.

On the other hand, Hermione was shocked to stone. She never thought that Harry would willingly initiate a hug, much less one like he was currently giving her. And using the sense that always connected her with her friend unlike any other, she tried to find out something amiss. She only found joy, happiness and a something else. Something had changed inside Harry, she could sense it, she could feel it but she couldn't pinpoint it. It was like – it was always meant to be there, whatever it was, just that it wasn't there until that moment and while it felt different, it wasn't odd in Harry. She couldn't help but smile too, at the carefree bright smile on Harry's face.

He set her down and panted, gasping out words in between breaths, "…'Mione… I… I brought… gifts for all… of you."

The group made their way to the table where Hermione helped Harry sit down. Ron's scowl was now acting as a permanent feature of his face. But he took a seat too.

Harry picked the backpack off the floor where he'd discarded it in the frenzy of greetings. Only Mrs. Weasley noticed the absence of wand in his hand as he flicked and the backpack appeared in his hand – Hermione was too winded, Ron too deep in thought about his friend's behaviour and Ginny too excited about the prospect of getting gifts.

Harry seemed to have noticed too. But instead of looking surprised, he looked sheepish and looked around. Meeting his eyes, she lifted one of her eyebrows in a questioning manner. He just acknowledged with a nod and made a gesture with his lips that clearly read as, "Later."

Deciding to investigate later, she spoke out, urging him to get a move on.

"Oh! Yeah… Umm… so here – "

He handed over Ginny's gift. Opening the wrap, her eyes went three sizes too big for her. Inside the box was a Snitch with signature of the star seeker of the Holyhead Harpies on it.

"Got her to sign it in exchange for mine… really stupid if you ask me."

Mrs. Weasley's gift turned out to be a self-filling bottle of fire-whiskey. She couldn't decide whether to scold the young boy or to be really happy about the present. So, she just thanked him and waited for the other gifts to be unveiled.

Hermione opened her gift and sat there, eyes dazed and mouth hanging open. Stunned, once again. Harry was doing that a lot today, Mrs. Weasley thought. Ron picked up Hermione's gift and, he too, became rigid and stunned. Mrs. Weasley couldn't stop herself from picking the box off Ron's hand and looking inside.

Inside a most beautiful pendant on a most beautiful chain. The pendant looked very similar to a phoenix in flight with a transparent ruby coloured gem at its heart. She approached to pick it up. It was very elegant; its sheer beauty had knocked her children off their senses. But as she picked the pendant up and inspected it from up close, she noticed the letters P-O-T-T-E-R engraved in a strange way behind the pendant. She only managed to turn towards Harry, despite her shock, and ask, "Is this Goblin made?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley."

The group waited for Hermione to come around. When she did, she wanted Harry to take the gift back. But he didn't buckle under her relentless verbal attacks, unlike earlier times. She settled down with a huff and soon enough she was admiring the beautiful piece of jewellery.

Ron's gift turned out to be a book that alternatively showed up as the Canon's very own book on its club history and past playing tactics, and a book that dealt with study techniques and why one should study well to get a good career. Ron was furious and glad at the same time.

Mr. Weasley returned home a little later. With him back, Mrs. Weasley quickly called everyone for dinner. Harry was already sitting in his customary seat at the table reading a book on…

"Cryptanalysis, Harry?" Hermione asked her friend. For the world of her she couldn't imagine Harry reading a serious book on advanced studies that came from the magical world, let alone muggle.

"Yup. Very refreshing and easy on my brain."

Okay, now that was definitely odd. Harry Potter finding an advanced muggle subject easy and refreshing? Deciding to ponder on it later, she dug into her dinner.

Mrs. Weasley was thinking about Harry's answer to her question – "Oh… its nothing. Dumbledore just wanted to help me learn a few neat tricks. I got the hang of wandless summoning and in the process of learning wandless magic got myself a boost in my magic."

The dinner ended in a lot less noise than was usual in the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley informed Harry that he'd be bunking with Ron. Ron, who was still grumpy about his gift and an unknown rift in their friendship, grumbled something incomprehensible and stomped off to his room, his feet making loud noise on the wooden creaky stairs.

"If you don't mind, I have to be up waiting for Dumbledore's message. Something about some job of his that he wanted me to know. So, I'd like to camp here on the living room couch, please."

It was phrased as a question and a request but Arthur could feel the hidden strength of conviction behind the voice. Having worked for so long in the ministry, he'd learnt to distinguish between a request and a demand. This was a demand and one he dared not to oppose.

Though he had to wonder how Harry got that tone – he had heard him speak with strength before… His words had a different nature to them this time.

Hence, before anything could be said, he spoke out, "Molly dear, I think that will be the best. Go on Harry, make yourself at home. If you need anything, you know where to find us. Come on Molly, let us leave Harry alone."

The Weasley couple left the room to go to their bed, leaving Harry to arrange his stuff. He opened his trunk and saw that it mostly held his Hogwarts stuff and clothes. Sighing in relief, he moved the trunk away and opened his backpack. Moonlight fell on the bag and through the open zip something gave off a metal glint. Paying it no mind, he pulled out the guitar he had found in his mother's vault. He closed the bag and propped it up by the side of the sofa – his makeshift bed. He kicked off his pair of boots off his feet, suddenly realizing that nobody had asked him anything about the pair of combat boots he was wearing. Cracking a small smile, he steered clear of his armour-padded jacket. It was a proof to the sense of surprise he brought along with him that day that no one had noticed anything different about his dress or his attitude.

He slowly laid himself on the plush sofa, groaning at the relief that his aching muscles got. He lay there, unmoving, for a long time before he opened his eyes again and sat up against the side hand-support of the sofa. Quietly he pulled out the French harp from his bag and blew off the bits of dust on it.

Hermione woke up. She had been up late thinking about everything that came to her mind. The magical world, the war that was brewing, her subject of affection, Ronald Weasley, and Harry, her best friend. She had once read that asking out a best friend was the biggest gamble – "either you get everything you want, or you lose whatever you ever had". She had never, since then, thought of Harry. In some corner of her mind, a part of her always wondered how he managed to be so caring, so honourable and so good even after all that had happened with him. That traitorous part always recognized the small gentlemanly gestures that were typical of Harry, and it never felt guiltily proud of his 'saving people thing'. Yet she never let them out. Back in their fourth year, she had decided never to let anyone know about her liking Harry because Harry would never return her feelings. So instead of Harry, she had set her eyes on Ron, so that she could distract herself from thinking about the boy with jet-black hair. In spite of all that she sometimes would end up thinking of the ride on a hippogriff. It was her private memory, her Patronus memory. And she'd never share it with anyone else.

Her thoughts had drifted off from there and she had ended up falling asleep. But a slight discomfort had got her awakened. She got up and tip-toed out of the room so as not to wake Ginny up.

While coming out of the washroom, she revelled at the calmness that was in the air. A gust of wind blew, carrying a whiff of chill. She drew her cloak tighter around herself and paced through the dark stairs to get to the room. She'd barely moved up a floor when the wind died out and with the sound of wind gone, a very low muffled music was heard. Her curiosity incited, she descended the stairs like a cat and stopped at the kitchen door. She couldn't believe her eyes! There was Harry, her 'best friend' lying down on the sofa, head propped up against one of the hand-rest, legs on the other. And he was playing a harmonica.

She stood there listening to the sweetest music she had ever heard.

At some point of time, he had stopped playing and started singing – the charmed harmonica kept playing the music he had played. Harry's voice was deep and a little husky; the music and the voice made a surreal symphony – one she could swear she'd never get to listen anywhere else. It was like the campfire songs where riders and soldiers would sit around the campfire and sing to music all the while drinking light alcohols. She felt like being present in some deep Irish valley surrounded by forest. She couldn't express in words what she was feeling. It was magical.

It was a long time after which she could process the song. The song was about three ladies that the narrator in the song had loved. It spoke of the first lady who had honey coloured hair, a very intelligent mind and the deepest eyes one could find, the second lady with silver hair who was more beautiful than any angel and had the most charming smile, and the third lady who could be everyone at once and could turn a bad day bright simply with her jokes and fun-loving attitude.

The third part of the song confused her. Who could be everyone at the same time? Waving it away as a whim of the song-writer, she simply stood there, leaning against the doorframe and enjoying the brilliant singing of her best friend, one she never knew could sing so well.

Before the song could end, there was a sudden flash of fire inside the kitchen. Hermione, startled, stepped back from the room. When she peeked out of the edge, she saw Headmaster's phoenix, Fawkes, giving Harry some note. Harry took it, read it and crunched it up in his hand. Then suddenly changing the decision, he wrote down something on the backside of the note. Hermione was so focused on the action itself that she remained oblivious to Harry's wandless conjuration and vanishing of a pen without any effort.

Harry smoothed down a few feathers on Fawkes' ruffled wings and said, "Take this to Albus. And get Soldy and Corsair on your way. The note will explain everything to them and Albus. Bye Fawkes!"

In another flash, Fawkes disappeared. Then Harry called out, "Mr. Weasley, will you please get down here now?"

The whole family got down to the kitchen. Hermione was still hiding behind the door of the living room. It was after Ginny asked aloud, "Where is Hermione? She wasn't in my room," that she walked into the kitchen.

Everyone looked expectantly at her.

She simply said that she had gone to the washroom and was returning when she heard Ginny and came in.

Mrs. Weasley turned towards Harry and asked, "Yes, Harry? You called us?"

Harry couldn't keep the mirth out of his voice, "I never knew that this house had so many Mr. Weasleys."

Everyone grumbled a little.

"Okay, okay. Dumbledore's message just came in. I just wanted to let you know that I'll be leaving in an hour or so. Mad-Eye is coming to get me."

"Where to?" Arthur asked.

"To Grimmauld Place. For some meeting that Dumbledore is arranging with a few of his old associates." It was a half-truth.

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Moody side-along apparated him to the steps of 12, Grimmauld Place to avoid suspicion. They both went in. There were Professor Dumbledore and two other men. The two men rose from their seats and saluted, "Sir!"

Harry gestured at them and they sat down in their seats.

"Welcome Harry. How are you after last night?"

"Good."

"Well then let's get on with this sudden meeting."

After a couple of hours, Dumbledore and Harry walked out of the house.

Dumbledore said, "Your men are really well-trained Harry. But I wanted to give the Death-Eaters another chance. Will you allow me to find out if they'd be willing to turn back to light?"

"If you think it is for the better, then… "

"Thank you, my boy. Oh! And before I forget, the Horcrux has been found. Mr. Soldy created an excellent lion from the debris who took the brunt of the Withering-Curse. I dare say that the Horcrux couldn't be destroyed. As weak as I am after dealing with so many wards, I can't summon the fiend-fyre. And I couldn't trust your men enough to do it. So, what to do with it?"

"I can purge it, Albus. My blood is potent basilisk venom if I will it to become so, remember?"

"Yes, I do… "

He did remember that fateful battle in the chamber. He had locked away Harry's powers to ensure that no unwanted attention was turned towards the school and students were harmed just to get to Harry. And in doing so he had kept Harry from using his abilities in his fight against the Basilisk. His only escape from grief is that something good came out of it, due to the Basilisk-Venom and Phoenix-Tears mixing with his blood, Harry could willingly produce the Healing-Tears and Basilisk-Venom.

"Then allow me."

Dumbledore quietly brought out a pouch and gave it to Harry.

"Harry? The ring holds a stone, a very valuable one. It is called the Resurrection Stone."

"Does it do what its name suggests it does?"

"Yes and no. It does something close but not exactly what it refers to."

"Don't worry. I won't be tempted. I have come to terms with the loss of my parents and Sirius."

"I am grateful Harry. Sometimes the old age forgets what strength youth can hold. It was most unwise for me to think that after what you've gone through, you'd fall for this."

"I must thank you for your trust on me."

Dumbledore sighed and said, "No Harry. Thank You… for providing me a person in you upon whom I can place my trust. But, the Stone is dangerous, Harry – and that is not because of the Horcrux! It can destroy you…"

"Easy old man. I know what they are. I now have two. The oval and the triangle. And you have the line."

"How…?"

"Albus, you are forgetting that I've had enough _time_ to learn everything I could."

"And you don't want it?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you dead."

Dumbledore stood there gaping, an appearance most unfitting on his visage. Finally, his eyes twinkled brightly and he smiled.

"You have become wise, very much so. Wiser than I could ever be. Harry? Promise me that you'll never go evil. Because if you do, there won't be much that could stop you."

"I won't go evil, I promise."

"Thank you, Harry. I'll take you back to the Burrow. Please forget about this and the war. We need you to stay out of the limelight of power for now. Your fame already does a bad job of hiding you. Please don't do anything to show everyone this last ruse too… that you are NOT powerful enough to destroy worlds and create them anew."

Harry just smirked, "Okay, I am NOT powerful enough to do that and to conjure up intergalactic armies and fleets. I am just a normal school guy who is having some inspiration to play a lot of pranks this year."

Dumbledore noticed the bargain and accepted it.

"That is all I ask, Harry. Now let us head off to Gringotts for Sirius' will and then we will be back to Burrow. I must warn you though. You are having his everything. He didn't give anyone, anything else. I think Remus got his old trust vault, about ten thousand galleons. And a few others got a few small vaults or items, gifts if you will. And a certain lady was disowned along with a few others too… "

"And last but not the least, I offer the Tonks' a place under the House of Black as my mother's instructions make it impossible to actually bring them back into the family." The goblin rolled the parchment and put it back inside the golden cylinder. He then stoutly walked out of the room, to put the cylinder back inside the Black Vault.

Harry sat there thinking.

"Lord Black and a little less than a billion galleons? Not bad Sirius, not too bad for an escaped convict."

"I agree with you, Harry. This is most remarkable."

"Oh! Albus, the fact that you can continue using Grimmauld Place as HQ goes without saying."

Dumbledore looked around the empty room to make sure it was actually empty, though he was sure Harry would have noticed if it wasn't with his abilities and power.

He then said, "Thank you, Harry. But I still don't like it that you killed Kreacher."

"I didn't. Black family magic did… As punishment for his betrayal."

Burrow was a hive of activity when the two of them appeared there. All the Weasleys minus Percy was there. And Bill had brought home Fleur.

Harry stopped dead in his tracks and kept staring at the duo as Bill was trying to explain to his mother that he was just helping Fleur with English and Curse-Breaking.

Dumbledore had stepped a few steps further when he noticed the absence of his student. He stopped and looked behind. Then he looked forth again and realization dawned on him as he was reminded of the night in Harry's fourth year.

 **FLASHBACK**

"Harry, you have to understand. If I give you your powers, the other Champions are as good as squibs in front of you, rather as microbes in front of your prowess in… in everything. It doesn't matter if it will give you your actual age back!"

"But you said that if I seek her then she'll become the target for the enemies. I just want to protect her!"

"No, Harry! You do not understand. You cannot get into any relationship. Any at all. Your friendship with Ronald and Hermione put them in enough danger as is."

"But sir…"

"Harry, what is the value of one man in face of the plight of millions of others? Nothing. It is too dangerous. You can't do anything of that sort now. Maybe after the war… "

"Sir, you really think she is going to stay single that long? Look at her, Sir. She is the living proof of the word 'Perfection'… Don't you think someone will 'notice' that and get their act up? Someone better than a fourteen-year-old bespectacled boy who has nothing to brag about except schoolyard victories? I can't even speak of my deeds in the Chamber or with the Dementors as you have sealed them off using the Vow!"

"I am sorry but it is not possible. Without Riddle present we can't predict what he'll do when he returns. Harry, I am afraid I have to draw up ranks in between us."

Harry only looked with clear protest in his eyes.

"I, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, hereby declare that Mr. Harry Potter, as a student or Tri-Wizard Champion, is not to engage himself in any way beyond simple acquaintance with Ms. … "

"You know it is not magically binding."

"Yes. Yet I also know that you, Harry, will never go against a direct order from the only superior you have got as far as rank goes."

"I…"

"Harry, please!"

Harry sat there like a stone. After what seemed like ages, he spoke out in a tiny voice, "Okay, I agree with the order."

 **FLASHBACK END**

He walked up to Harry and said in a low voice, "Harry, please! Remember your order."

He added through gritted teeth as he noticed the small sparks leaving the fingertips of the young guy's hands, "Harry control yourself. It is nothing. They are just together. It means nothing. Please, Harry! Your powers are activating… Control yourself!"

Metallic fibres started forming over his shoulder joints. They were slowly stitching themselves together. The shoulder joint was almost covered in metal plates that did not shine with the normal metallic glint. They were the integral parts of Harry's defense protocols.

Slowly, Harry controlled himself. He reigned in the powerful impulses that were flowing through him. The metal subsided. After he had calmed down enough, he looked at Dumbledore.

It pained him to see the tears swimming in the child's eyes. He didn't want to imagine the physical pain Harry had to endure to dispel his standard protocols forcefully against its own rule-set.

Harry shut his eyes and lowered his face, hands gripped tight. Two teardrops fell on the grass, and to Dumbledore's amazement, the grass there brightened up and began swaying in a non-existent wind, absolutely fresh.

A couple of minutes later, Harry looked up again. This time there was a hint of steel in his eyes. He spoke through tight lips, "Don't worry Albus. I won't destroy the plan by going stray now."

"I seem to be saying this a lot today, but I must say it one more time. Harry, you have become wise."

The normally noisy Weasley family had retreated back into their home by then. And as disapproving Mrs. Weasley was of Fleur, she'd never willingly let someone feel bad or unwelcome. Her hospitality and motherly affection simply couldn't allow that. So Fleur was welcomed inside The Burrow as well.

The two of them quietly made their way to the kitchen door of the Burrow.

At the doorstep, Harry turned, gave a weak smile, and said to him, "Spending years in stasis while fighting a war against your own mind will do that you, Albus. Let's go, I am sure there is a 'special' feast for dinner tonight."

He opened the door and stepped in.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Unlocking What Is Not To Be Unlocked.**

The days in Hogwarts passed with the monotony of classes and the normal behaviour and activities of the students. Harry found both of them really boring and inconsequential. He recognized the fact that these children needed to be educated in the different branches of magic so that they could use them in their future to secure jobs and that not everyone had the innate understanding that he had. But his understanding of 'common' human requirements and nature did not stop him from feeling like he was being taught alphabets when he was the most learned man in English in the world, metaphorically so, when one-day Professor McGonagall was teaching the class human transfiguration. The class found it very interesting when she said that the lessons contained information about Animagus transformations.

Harry, himself being a Shifter, had so instinctive knowledge in the subject that he needn't have bothered. Yet, Professor McGonagall's stern nature made sure that he at least tried somewhat – he couldn't after all unlock his powers now (he could easily do that) and show the teacher his Shifting abilities; the sheer magical backlash that would occur if he broke out of the magical bindings would take down half the castle.

The class went on with Harry getting more bored with each passing second. He didn't realize that he was dozing off until Professor McGonagall attempted to transfigure his hand into a rat trap. At this he was startled. He woke with a start as the spell approached him. Reacting without thinking, he switched back his hand from the rat trap mere seconds from when it hit him. He swayed in his place, having woken up with such a shock, and grabbed the edge of his desk to steady himself. When he had gotten his bearings, he looked at the class. And he found a class full of students gaping at him. Even Professor McGonagall was stunned into speechlessness. Hermione was gaping and looking at him in a queer way. Harry summed up his thoughts in two words, "Oh, shit!"

This brought McGonagall out of her stupor, "Language, Mr. Potter!"

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The meeting in the Headmaster's office was making his head ache. The small spikes of pain soon became full-fledged throbbing as Dumbledore gave McGonagall all sorts of crap theories about why Harry had been able to do what he did. But, the Deputy-Headmistress did not look even remotely happy or convinced with those explanations.

"Minerva, I am sure that Harry had a bout of Accidental Magic – having been woken up from slumber… "

"You are sure? YOU ARE SURE? How can a sixteen-year-old boy have a bout of Accidental Magic? It is unheard of!"

"Minerva, calm down!"

At the sudden rebuke, the Professor deflated slightly. Within moments though, she was back to looking at the Headmaster defiantly, clearly waiting for a better answer.

"Minerva, you must understand. I did not want to bring this matter up. It is unheard of, Yes. But it is also unheard of that a boy should be charged with the duty of being the one who'd defeat the greatest dark lord of the century that Britain had seen."

With each word, the Professor's shoulders slouched and a sad appearance made its way into her face. She was rather forcefully reminded of the Prophecy concerning Harry and Voldemort that Dumbledore had revealed to her at the beginning of the term.

"So, you are telling that it was the stress?"

"Yes, Minerva."

After the Professor had left, Dumbledore looked at Harry with a curious expression a small smile in place.

"You seem to be losing control, Harry."

It wasn't a question or an accusation. It was just a statement. So, he stayed silent, and decided to be so till he was asked an actual question.

The calmness that reigned in the office after the vehement verbal battle soothed his nerves. He visibly relaxed in his seat and stretched his hand towards the bowl that contained lemon-drops. After popping a couple of the sweets in his mouth, he silently sucked them, revelling in the slight tang and sweet taste.

"Harry, I have thought of something and I wish to know your opinion in that matter."

"What is it, Albus?"

"I think I should remove the bindings and let you control your own powers."

Harry stopped sucking, opened his eyes and looked at the old man with glazed eyes.

After a very long time, he managed to get a word out, "Wha'…?"

"Yes, Harry. It is getting very draining for me to hold the bonds. And I don't want you to lose control one day and destroy half the castle. It is best if you started learning how to keep your own powers in check and keep acting like the naïve school-boy that you should be."

"I…"

"Hear me out, Harry. Tonight, I'll let go of the bonds. You'll slowly come to your powers here in my office. And then we'll have the whole night to teach you to keep low profile and control your massive core and list of abilities from manifesting."

After several minutes, Harry stiffly nodded.

"Very well then. I'll let the teachers know that you are not going to the rest of the classes today. Give your mind some rest. I find a walk very refreshing after having my mental facilities face such ordeals."

With a small farewell, Harry left the office and made his way for Hagrid's hut. There, Hagrid was having classes with the third-years. A beautiful unicorn was trotting and grazing as Hagrid spewed information and the third-years copied those down fervently.

"Hey there, Hagrid."

"'Ello, Harry!"

"Is that a unicorn?"

"Yea', it is. Wan' ter go near him?"

"Sure."

"Ere, take a few steps closer to 'im, and wait for 'im to acknowledge you. If he comes closer, then you are fine to go further close to 'im. But if he gets scared and moves away, you have get back too. You ready?"

"Yeah, I am. But Hagrid, your accent is gone! And you speak so much better now…"

"All Olympe's doing. She forced me to take classes from her so that she could teach me to speak well."

Flashing Hagrid a bright smile, Harry moved to get closer to the Unicorn. And he'd barely taken a few steps, when the majestic beast looked at him and its eyes broadened. The Unicorn almost galloped up to him and stood in front of Harry. It brought its face closer to him, sniffed a little and nudged him in the chest.

"Wow, Harry! You must be the first man to have been that close with a Unicorn."

Harry was stroking the single horn with his left hand, and rubbing the lower neck and its mane with his right.

The Unicorn gave a neighing sound and shook its head in a clear gesture. Harry gave a small smile and walked around. With a flurry of movement, he got on its back and hugged the strong neck tightly. The Unicorn gave another neighing sound and galloped off.

Hagrid and the third-year students stood there looking at the trail of dust that was left behind by the Unicorn and its rider.

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"You need the lessons on keeping low profile very dearly, do you know that?"

The Headmaster was sitting in his chair, looking at his prodigy student, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

"You are going to give me heart-attacks if you continue with your exploits, Harry!"

"I must protest. It was the Unicorn's fault."

"So…"

"And it did a good job doing that fault. Because when it was galloping aimlessly, I noticed Malfoy sneaking off into the forest. And his arms were exposed…"

"Headmaster, Headmaster!"

"Calm down, Severus."

Snape had burst into the room like a possessed man. He was panting and gasping for breath.

"Take your time, Severus. I am in no hurry."

Once he had gathered his bearings back, he noticed Harry in the room.

"Potter, you insolent brat. What are you doing here? Get off, now! I have some important business with the Headmaster."

"I'd rather prefer he stays here, Severus."

Grumbling in defeat, he gave one more suspicious look at him and then turned towards Dumbledore.

"Headmaster, it is confirmed. Draco has gotten the dark mark. And I think he has been ordered to…" He drifted off, looking at Harry again.

"I have full confidence in Harry, Severus. Please continue with your information."

"Well, I think his orders are to murder you."

Surprising both of the professors, Harry said out, "Hah! I guessed as much. Now why else would he take the risk of wearing around the dark mark. He isn't very brave, either!"

"What are you…"

"Severus, leave us. I have some important discussion with Mr. Potter."

Snape scowled at the dismissal, opened his mouth to give a sharp retort. Then he thought better of it and turned back. His cloak billowed as he stomped out of the room.

"Harry, you were saying…?"

"Albus, I saw the dark mark on Malfoy's hand. If he really is here to kill you, then he must be removed."

"Harry, think."

"What is there…"

Dumbledore interrupted him with a raised hand.

"Think Harry. Young Mr. Malfoy is doing it all for his family. To keep them safe. I've checked Severus' mind and found the day when Mr. Malfoy was marked. He was marked under the orders that he must kill me. Because if he failed, then his family would be executed."

Harry sat there pondering on Headmaster's words.

When he spoke up, he shocked Dumbledore by saying, "You are not going to do anything, are you?"

"How did you…"

"Albus, you are making a mistake with all these chances with your enemies. In my belief, enemies are to be neutralized at any cost."

He paused a little and added, "I'll keep an eye on Malfoy. Now let's get on with the schedule."

After a few seconds, Dumbledore said in a low voice, "Yes, let's."

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Morning light was lighting up the whole office when Harry opened his eyes. He groaned in the ache that he felt in his muscles. Slowly, he sat up and cursed because of the stiffness of the joints. As soon as he sat up, he felt light-headed.

"Master is awake! Tippy must go inform Head-Sir!"

At the sudden shriek, he looked to his side, startled. He caught a glimpse of a house-elf just before it popped away.

Shaking his head to get rid of the metaphorical cobwebs that had formed inside his head, he tried to get his bearings back.

At another popping sound, Harry looked to find Dumbledore looking at him from where he'd apparated in.

"How are you feeling, Harry?"

"Drained, famished and very weak."

"Ah! That would be because your mind hadn't caught up with the fact that you are supposed to be…"

Harry went rigid and his bright golden-white aura flashed, blinding him as well as Dumbledore.

"… a lot more powerful." Dumbledore finished his interrupted speech.

"What the hell was that? I almost felt like someone was… someone was…"

"Giving you teenager problems, Harry?"

Harry went bright red in blush and quickly nodded.

"You are going to need a very cold shower; I take it?"

Still blushing furiously, Harry said, "Yes, please!"

Almost an hour later, he returned to the office.

"Welcome back, Harry. How are you?"

"Am good."

"Harry, you realize that due to your powers being bound, your core has only expanded during this time?"

"Yes, it is a likely theory."

"Well, then let me tell you that your core has increased to impossible proportions. If you were to let go of your skills and only fought a battle of sheer magical strength against… I guess, Riddle, Grindelwald and me, together, you are likely to win a few times over."

Harry had to physically stop himself from gaping.

"And it is the reason why it took so long for you to wake up."

"So, what about my training in controlling my power?"

"Predictably, you'll now need several lessons so that you don't turn everyone around you blind when you cast a simple _Lumos_."

Harry groaned.

"You won't be going to classes for the time being, Harry. Come on, let's begin with organizing your mind."

Almost five hours later, a knackered Harry lay in an ottoman that he himself had conjured without even noticing that he was doing so. Dumbledore chuckled at the careless display of wandless magic. Harry was so powerful that magic was obeying his thoughts without even him recognizing the orders that he was making.

Harry was thinking of his mindscape. To see his efforts paying off was equally making him happy and frightening him. He had spent the better part of two years in stasis into designing his mindscape. A concentrated galaxy of seventy-three hundred planets. The centre of the galaxy was a Sun that was his core's manifestation in his mind. Surrounding it were the powering planets. The second layer consisted of about two hundred planets which served as his galaxy's centres of civilization, and as for his mind, his memories and skills were stored there. The third layer was a ring of about a hundred planets that acted as the command ring. It housed the command centres of his galaxy's fleet and arsenal, in other words it was the main defence of his mind and controlled the other defences. After that, in concentric layers were inter-planetary shipyards, celestial cannon belts, planets with airbases that could deploy squadrons of inter-planetary fighter space crafts to assault any intruding presence who managed to pierce the outer shields. Beyond the planets, at a distance of about 2 parsecs, in his mind, from the closest planets were the several systems of shields, powered by the powering planets closest to the central Sun. Dumbledore couldn't even get past his first line of shields.

And if Dumbledore couldn't, then he doubted anyone could. After all, he had successfully tested his mind's defence against several sieges by trillions of enemies during his battle against his own mind.

He smirked when he thought of the special defence he had in mind for people who did manage to break through his every other defence. A black hole that sucked in the intruding person's consciousness. Very convenient!

"Harry, take some rest. It is nearing afternoon, I'll go get some fresh air and get us some snacks and then we will continue with our training on your control."

A long time after Dumbledore left, Harry, feeling rested enough, sat up in lotus position and focused on compiling every single fact he'd heard, seen or experienced in some other way about Voldemort or Tom Riddle into a single coherent file in the Grand Library of the Citadel on Planet B-133 inside his mindscape. It was after all the place where the Spartan Guards, warriors of his imagination, trained and quartered; and hence was safest. ( **AN: More on Spartan Guards will be said later in the story.** )

He relived every single moment of Voldemort's life through the connection he shared with Voldemort. It had taken monumental power to keep the connection from his side open after it broke down on both of their sides when he had helped Dumbledore remove the Horcrux from his forehead. Not to mention that it was bloody painful. But it was an effective tool – helping him peek inside Voldemort's mind, not too deeply, while preventing the reverse from happening.

In the accelerated time inside his mind, he quickly reached his fourth year and he stopped. He couldn't believe his eyes. Voldemort had given them the tools for his own destruction! He had used Harry's blood to resurrect himself. So, in his veins flows the very blood that flows through Harry's only without the added benefits that it holds, as the benefits are directly connected with Harry's magic. Magical bloods retain their relation to their source. So, if he could perform a blood ritual that effectively blasted Riddle into smithereens, it will be easy to beat him – the best part would be that he'd fall without any fighting! Only if he could get the information on the Horcruxes. Voldemort guarded them so strongly that he regularly obliviated it from his mind. The information was only present in the bond that he shared with his familiar, Nagini.

And familiar bonds are impenetrable with the exception of using _Imperio_ curse.

With the file compiled, Harry opened his eyes. Dumbledore was there, sitting in his chair, looking curiously at him.

"I am glad you decided to come back to the living world, my friend."

"Friend?"

"Yes, Harry. I cannot consider you a student or a lesser man anymore. By all means, you have become a better wizard. I need not mention that you are the better man in between the two of us."

"But... "

"No buts, Harry. Here, Fawkes claims that he desires to bond with you. He said something along the lines of him not being able to gain his full potential with my power, but you being more than sufficient for his needs."

Ron and Hermione were getting extremely worried. Okay, maybe not Ron. But Hermione was beyond herself with worry. They had last seen Harry in his transfiguration class. It has been almost two days since then but Harry had not returned from Headmaster's office. Rumour was already spreading that Harry had been sent off somewhere, expelled, imprisoned in Azkaban or, he'd escaped the country as a coward.

And the duo of the Golden Trio was facing immense pressure and humiliation. Ron and Hermione, both realized that it was because of Harry that they'd always gotten some leeway, however unnoticed those were before. The teachers were indifferent towards them; they were just normal students to them. There was no profuse praise for Hermione when she did well in class, just a small acknowledgement or a few house points. She noticed the change. Ron was constantly being pranked and joked about.

But that day dinner became really problematic. Pansy Parkinson, aided by Draco Malfoy, came around to the Gryffindor table and started hurling insults at Hermione. Whatever Malfoy said about Harry, the fact that his absence encouraged him and his group to direct filthy and continuous insult at a Gryffindor while she is in her own table proved that Harry's presence kept them at bay.

"Why do you even keep coming to Hogwarts? You are as ugly as an Engorged-Bowtruckle. You are so filthy that no self-respecting wizard would even make you a concubine. You are a mud…"

"If you finish that word Ms. Parkinson, then I'll make the rest of your time in Hogwarts permanent hell." A deep voice that simply exuded authority and command, and demanded respect, came from the side of the group.

The heads of the students swung sideways like on spring, and they found themselves looking at the missing Boy-Who-Lived, not that they recognized. Hermione and Ron saw him, too. But it wasn't their fault that they didn't recognize their 'friend' straight away. In front of them stood a very regal looking young man with a pale skin, drawn tightly on the high-cheekbone, and windswept hair. He was wearing heavy black robes with golden runic designs along the chest and sleeves, very definitely made of extremely expensive materials. Behind him stood Headmaster Dumbledore, looking like he was there to back him up in anything he was about to do.

Recognition dawned on Hermione when she saw the Potter crest on the chest of the robes and then she looked up to find, upon looking closer, the entrancing emerald eyes that she'd grown so accustomed with. Except it had flecks of gold in it.

"Who are you?" Pansy said more bravely than she was currently feeling.

"I am surprised that you don't recognize me. But that is immaterial. What is very relevant to the situation we have in hand is your verbal abusing of Miss Granger."

He paused a little and then said, "Miss Parkinson, please apologize to Miss Granger and leave this place immediately."

"I'd rather run starkers in the Great Hall than apologize to this piece of filth, mud… Yiiieeekkkk"

She gave a shrill shriek and ran out of the hall, not a strip of cloth or string on her body. Completely starkers, just like she said.

"What is this? You, young man, you'll pay for this. I'll see you sent to Azkaban for this…" Snape's rant was paused by the young guy's raised hand.

"I am afraid I do not know what you are talking about, Professor."

Snape looked at him with loathing and noticed only a faint mark of the scar he was so famous for, and almost shouted, "Potter! I know you are playing games. You vanished the poor girl's clothes. I have never seen a more abhorrent act."

"I think you are just confused, Professor."

"Confused? You insolent brat! I will not let you hurt any of the Slytherin students!"

"And what of the other students, Sir? Will you let them be harmed? Will you let a student from Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff get hurt, Sir? Or, Gryffindor, for that matter?"

Snape's face contorted in outrage, but he remained quiet.

"Is it not the duty of the teachers to protect _every_ student from being harmed in any way?"

Snape couldn't take it anymore. He was going to retort sharply when Dumbledore spoke out.

"It indeed is the duty of the teachers. But mistakes happen to the best of us, doesn't it Severus?"

Snape sensing that the situation was not his favour stayed wisely silent.

Dumbledore added, "And for giving us a welcome reminder about our duties as teachers, I award Mr. Potter 20 points."

That was too much for Severus Snape. He just turned around and walked back to the staff table.

Harry kept walking with Dumbledore, through a door beside the staff table, into the antechamber that it revealed upon being opened.

******************************AWTTS******************************

Inside the antechamber, the Headmaster-student duo sat near a blazing fire thinking deeply.

Suddenly, Dumbledore spoke, "Are you sure this is possible?"

"I won't know unless I researched a bit, I think. But Thurgmancy is something that seems to be a viable solution to this debacle."

"Will you be able to do it?"

"I might be…" He trailed away. And after almost a minute, he face-palmed, giving a very accurate facial expression of exasperation.

"I am a fool!"

"I wouldn't be able to agree with that, Harry. You are anything but."

"No I really am. Here I am doubting if I could pull off a Thurgmancy ritual, when in reality I am a master of Blood Magic. Hell, I am a master of every form of magic that has been and yet to be discovered! I could just use my magic to bring about the effects of that ritual. The ritual won't work because of the distance, and I certainly won't be performing a ritual in front of Riddle. But I could use the Blood Magic when fighting him. That way I'd be close enough for the magic to take effect!"

"I must say that I can't confirm your theory. I don't believe there has been any Blood Mage alive in the last thousand years. I certainly am not one."

"I know. It will be too uncomfortable for you to do such Dark Magic. After all, no one has yet been able to distinguish between Dark and Evil Magic before me."

"I can agree with that. But I can't emphasize enough on the fact that you should be careful with what you do."

"I will be careful. Being careful is one of the most important lessons that you've given me, Albus. But first, FAWKES!"

At the call, a bright white flame appeared in front of Harry. The flame vanished leaving behind a majestic phoenix. It had a bright white body with silver tail feathers and golden tips on the wing feathers. It trilled a happy tune at seeing its master again, revelling in his power that it shared via their familiar bond.

"Fawkes, the students need not remember what happened in the Great Hall. Will you take care of that?"

Fawkes again trilled and vanished in blinding white flames. Mass obliviation while maintaining time-continuity was one of his new found abilities.

"I ought to get going. The rest of the year is going to be a mostly normal one, I hope. The lessons on my control will be according to normal schedule I guess?"

"Yes. And please, do make sure that you make a little less chaos with your next prank. Vanishing clothes could turn out into fearful rumours that we do not want associated with Hogwarts. Good day, Harry."

Harry transfigured his robes back to the school robes and stepped out of the chamber, walking back into the Great Hall for dinner, his face back under a _Glamour-_ Charm that showed him as the old Harry.

******************************AWTTS******************************


	3. Chapter 3

**What Happens At The Burrow.**

 **FLASHBACK**

Harry was trying to avoid looking anywhere but his plate. Mrs. Weasley, like always, had produced a feast of highest quality. But for Harry, the piled food seemed more of a torture. He had no appetite. The food seemed to be mocking at him. He might've put up a strong display in front of Dumbledore, but from inside he was crumbling. Every second seemed to be weakening his resolve. He knew he had lost his chance and there was no way to even try attempting what he wished. But his heart didn't want to let go. And it pained him. He scolded himself mentally, threatened to starve himself, and even had slashed open a few veins to ensure the excess blood pressure was released – standard procedure in his training. Yet the pang remained. The constant reminder of what could've been, of the life that he could've led, slapped him across the face and kept saying, "You have lost… You have lost…"

He lost it. He couldn't take anymore. Sitting at the same table with the three women that he had ever felt attracted too? The one lady he once was inches from showing his true self to? It was simply unbearable.

He pushed back his plate, the cutlery placed on it jingling, and held his head in his hands. The sound of plate scraping table-top and cutlery jingling caught Mrs. Weasley's attention even amongst the loud chatter.

The loud happy chatter. It was grating on his nerves. How could someone be so happy when outside a war is going on? He himself felt miserable. His condition was partly because of the fact that all the laughs and happy conversations brought back memories of Sirius. He'd died the death of a hero – protecting his godson. And it gave Harry migraines to keep repeating in his mind," It wasn't my fault… It wasn't my fault… It wasn't…"

It was war. People fell fighting. Hell… even he had seen it happen. More times than was considered _healthy_ for human mind. He had seen comrades fall in his mental-battles. He had seen so much, yet it felt way too bad to lose the last semblance of family.

He had even told Sirius about Hermione. He kept teasing Harry day and night about that. But in the end, it was like family knowing a secret of yours – one that you could afford letting them know. The other two… well, that was his secret. Who was he supposed to tell? Lupin, his honorary uncle? He'd tear him apart for even thinking about that. After all, he himself engaged in similar thoughts about one of the two.

No, Harry kept those things close kept secrets. Sometimes he felt he'd go mad with such thoughts.

Mrs. Weasley had rushed to his side in the meantime. She asked in concerned tone, "Are you alright, Harry?"

The chattering stopped.

Looking at the concerned looks, he sighed and said," Yeah, am fine. Just a little exerted and running low on sleep."

"Are you sure that's all, Harry?" Mr. Weasley looked worried. Last night, he had seen the look of authority in his eyes. Today he was looking at exhaustion. The young guy looked utterly sad and miserable. If he hadn't known, he would have thought that the boy was some sort of a leader who was charged with strenuous stuff.

Reality was – he didn't know, in spite of what he thought he knew.

Harry looked at his general direction for a few moments and then answered, "Yup. That's all."

Mrs. Weasley looked like she was working herself to her full-rant mode. Before she could get a word out, he raised a hand and added, "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to go on and take a nap. Should do me a world of good."

Mrs. Weasley shut her mouth, considered his words and then said, "Go on, Harry. Take rest. I'll call you in the morning."

He nodded and dragged his chair back to get out of the place. Several pairs of eyes followed his movements.

Harry trudged towards the door. Right at the door, he paused and turned. He looked at the people gathered at the table with a strange look on his face.

Tonks looked at Harry and followed his sight. No one else seemed to notice but he was looking at the general direction of Bill's girlfriend, the Delacour girl. That really shocked her. Harry was into older girls? Did he also perhaps sometimes look at her like that? If he did, she never noticed. And, well, she was too old to have caught his attention… maybe.

He kept looking queerly. Mrs. Weasley decided to break silence and ask, "Something's matter, Harry?"

He shifted his look towards her and his sights focused back to normal vision. He peered at her, shook his head sideways implying a 'no' and walked away.

"I think he is going insane." Nobody refuted Hermione's deduction. Everyone in the room sat in their seats, wondering what had happened to Harry Potter.

******************************AWTTS******************************

He sat, his chin on his knees, facing the window. The moonlight didn't flood the attic. Instead, a steady beam fell near the feet of Harry's folded legs lighting up a rectangular area. Some of the light reflected off the rough wooden floor and fell on Harry, distinguishing his silhouette from the naturally dark attic.

His mind had worked itself into a maddening state of insanity. So many thoughts had started flashing through his mind that he had to forcibly shove down all his conscious thought down his own effective mental black-hole. All that he was left with was his military discipline and strategic thinking. And his strategic thoughts all directed him towards one weakness, one chink in his 'armour'. He had readied himself for as long as he remembers. But that preparation had been solely in the ways of war. He had trained himself in every way imaginable – in several different forms of Science, some understood, some not; in every form of Martial Arts and other forms of hand-to-hand combat, in weapons of this world and fiction, in strategies and tactical decision making, in survival, in attrition warfare, in asymmetric and conventional warfare, in ways of starting revolutions and discreetly pulling the strings to perform coups, in secret-service procedures and black-ops actions and more importantly, in keeping himself focused and his head clear in every situation. But he'd forgotten to prepare himself mentally. Not the mental skills, he had them in spades and aces; he was deficient of emotional conditioning. He didn't prepare himself emotionally. His training had done wonders to controlling his emotions, but he still felt them.

He needed to forget those things. He couldn't let these thoughts of 'normalcy' derail him from his path. It wouldn't do to lose his mind over such… such… such stupidly romantic things when in the heat of battle. It might even prove to be dangerous – in all chances, he might one day find one or more of the trio held hostage by his enemies. What if he buckled under the pressure of the enemies at that? It would be a failure of the code he followed so religiously – enemy should be neutralized if it is advantageous to do so.

His strategic and logical thoughts went on and on about what could happen, what had already happened because he had to keep up the façade that he wore his heart on his sleeves. Hours passed as his sharp mind computed every situation, every plan, every strategy; the possibilities being endless.

It is then that he came up with the plan to use Blood Magic. He would have to out-fight the whole army under Riddle's command to reach him and use it. Best chances would be to draw him out in a pitched battle and weaken him enough to make him retreat. The effects of Blood Magic could be described as extremely violent at best and annihilating at worst. Therefore, it is best done in enemy surroundings. So, once Riddle retreats back to his base of operations, he'd track him down, get in there and finish off what began years ago on the Halloween night of 1981. The blast would take down Riddle's headquarters and the magical backlash would take care of his Death Eaters.

A perfect Endgame.

When he returned to his room that he shared with Ron, it was long past midnight. Ron was snoring away, sprawled all over the bed. Harry slowly walked over to his own bed and took off his armour padded jacket and the combat boots. With everything else on, he went to sleep. He had taken to sleeping in full combat garb – who knew when one had to react; after all, a war was going on. He didn't feel comfortable anymore in anything other than his combat dress. Night-dress made him feel decidedly awkward, like he was parading around without a string on is body. Other casual stuff felt just wrong to him. Like a part of him was missing.

He relaxed on the cosy bed. The invisible Glock strapped to his waist made a strong dent on the mattress. He put his hand on the cold metal body of the weapon and lovingly traced the runic patterns on it with his fingertip. When he had completed a fifth time, he sighed and unstrapped it. Pulling up the mattress, he put it on the base of the bed and replaced the mattress. Lying down for a few minutes, he turned to look at Ron.

"You are a lucky bastard, Ronald." He thought.

"Do you know why I never fight you? Because I don't have a reason to…" He paused for some time.

"I... I can't have what you have, Ronald. Family, proper friends, a normal hobby and… and, a girl who loves you back. You have Hermione, Ronald. And I let you go on without the added competition of myself because I can't give her what you could – a proper, normal life. I liked her, too. And out of that liking, I decided never to interfere in the lives of you two, again…. "

His thoughts drifted off as he slipped into deep slumber. He had confessed his thoughts, his feelings. Now it was time for his mind to repair and modify itself. Now was the time to slowly let go of the emotions that hold its master as a human and prevent from making him a perfect soldier.

By the time sun rose in the morning, Harry's mental world had changed. Several facilities have worked overnight, while he was asleep, to store the memories of him feeling attracted towards his 'best' friend in the containment sections of the largest storage location on one of his inner most planets. Stronger walls were put up around those sections, the heavy iron doors sealed off using memory specific pass-codes. Inside the 'tomb', fires burning at millions of degrees incinerated the memories faster than the blink of eye.

Harry was near to getting up. The commander of security for Planet Cluster D5 inside his mind smiled at the successful efforts.

"One down, two more to go."

The days at The Burrow passed with unbelievable rapidness. Mr. Weasley spent most of the time at the Ministry. Charlie was away at Romania. Bill and Fleur would be at Gringotts till there was light outside. The twins had started on with their joke shop and mostly stayed at their place. Ginny stayed up in her room mostly, cooped up and writing to her boyfriend, Michael Corner. Ronald and Hermione would sit in the kitchen or the living room, both of them reading – Ronald reading Quidditch Weekly, and the other reading some book on magical theory. Mrs. Weasley was a busy housewife as always.

And, all these gave Harry the perfect opportunity to stay out of radar. The less he communicated, the lesser were the chances of his secrets getting spilled. He stayed in the backyard, reading, flying or simply relaxing, during the day. After Bill and Fleur came home, he discreetly went up to his room and occupied the only chair in it – reading through surveillance charts, code-sheets, maps and files full of information on the First Blood War, as the first rise of Voldemort was named. He had received those files from Dumbledore in the last meeting. Moody had helped by getting hold of the maps. The other reports were on Death Eater movements, on their course of actions. Dumbledore might use Snape as a spy, but a spy among the ranks of the Inner Circle only gave information that he was volunteered by their 'respected' Dark Lord. To Harry, that was not enough. His network was completely non-human, spreading through multiple locations. Locations including seedy bars in the Knockturn Alley, places Aurors liked to go in gossiping groups, apothecaries, artefact stores and several other unsavoury places. All these places were continuously monitored by surveillance devices and sensors from one of his self-made parallel planes, planes that existed in those places yet were not tangible enough for other life forms to transcend its boundaries and enter them. In other words, they were completely repellent to entry except for Harry and anyone he chose to bring in.

The ingenious network of intelligence gathering yielded constant reports. He then could look through them, and find out about an odd incident or a known Death Eater buying a combination of ingredients that indicated certain potions or one of them letting slip some information that could be sewn in with several other tit-bits of clues and actions to find out about some bigger plan. Intelligence gathering was an art and a science. Just placing one spy amongst enemy ranks was the worst way to ensure that right info reached the right place at the right time. The worst case scenario would be if the enemy fed the spy wrong information and trapped the interdicting force that would be sent as a response, or if they tortured the spy to reveal all information. The best case scenario would be they find him out and kill him out of blind rage. Neither seemed a very good option for the men who are 'trying' to stop a dark lord from rising to power.

However, he didn't do it because he liked to do it. Pouring over maps, transcripts of countless conversations, notes filled with small bits of related data, and connecting them to figure out the bigger picture was something Harry excelled at – much like everything that he did – but by no means would he have done it almost every other day if it wasn't for the Weasleys and the Order members gathering in the ground floor and having fun.

No, he didn't have a problem with them having fun. He only couldn't see, without feeling his bound powers flaring up, Fleur sitting on the armrest of the same couch Bill was seated in and was leaning against him; giving a dazzling smile that clearly showed her happiness. He couldn't see Tonks sitting plastered to Lupin's side, one of her arms wrapped around his chest while the other hand held a bottle of Butterbeer, without having his fingers turn into his metallic armour form. He had to quickly revert them every time. But he had to stay in the gathering every now and then, due to Mrs. Weasley's demands, and he was getting ample training in emotion management and fast Shifting.

It wasn't such a day. The gathering had occurred much earlier. Harry had stayed on, sitting in a comfy sofa by the fireplace, sipping Butterbeer. The last flecks of daylight faded as he looked through the window. The evening had set in.

And it was then he noticed the pair apparate in, just beyond the ward line. He sighed at another evening wasted and stood up from the sofa. Emmeline Vance was the other person sitting beside him. She was a member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. As a person she was quite funny and always liked to keep a smile on her face. Her mixed brown-blonde hair cascaded around her in elegant waves.

The same hair bounced quite attractively when she looked at Harry and asked why he was leaving.

"Nothing, just got a little bored."

"Then come let us find something interesting to do."

"What will you do? Gobstones? Exploding Snap? I'm sorry Emmy, but I ain't in mood."

Emmeline had known Lily back from Hogwarts. And she had subconsciously in her mind assigned herself as someone who would take care of Harry. She had taken him shopping in Diagon Alley, spent evenings chatting about her work. And, eventually, a friendship had grown up between them – she called him Harry, not Mr. Potter anymore, and he called her Emmy. They had grown very close; Harry had taken to her immediately when she told him his mother's stories. He'd said that he had very little to remember his mother by.

Hence, it shocked her when he seemed way too distant. Like he was lost or something. He glanced at the door once more and walked away towards the staircase. Her eyes followed him to the first wooden landing but after that, the second level of stairs hid him from view.

She kept looking for a minute, then gave up as a bad job and joined Remus and Tonks in their conversation. She completely missed the entry of Bill and Fleur – if she had noticed, she might've been able to add the incidents up.

Upstairs, Harry sat in his chair, looking over a mess of aerial recon snapshots, satellite images, surveillance images of locations of attack and close range pictures taken by his spy-drones. The spy-drones were technically modified de-commissioned drones, modified to the point that they surpass even the latest drones in US or NATO arsenal along with their cutting edge technology by nearly a hundred years of technological advancements. They flew using technology that was prototype to even him. The result was complete absence of detectable footprints, untraceable by radar or any other means available to human beings, magical or not. Every single one of the drones were rendered impossible to be sensed, by the use of cloaking technology that borrowed its roots from both magical and mundane sources.

He cross-referenced all the visual data with movement reports that he had stitched from the several snippets of information from conversations amongst the patrons of the dirtiest of bars with damp and dank surroundings, deep inside the Knockturn and Outcast Alley. After jotting down all the points, he filled in the inference and conclusion part of the report. Stretching his body, he stood by the window, looking at the dark swampland beyond the grass field that was the Weasley backyard. The night sky was overcast with clouds. Moonlight was scant and very little that did show up between the clouds failed to light up the earth below. Revelling at the soothing calmness and dark outdoors, he blew the candles out and stood by the window in total darkness. He felt the friendliness and comfort that it extended towards his troubled self. If Riddle was going to hide in his Manor, he will take death there to gift him that. But first; he needed to be drawn out and his forces weakened in familiar ground.

He lost track of time as he stood there, looking at the inky black sky with the pearly strings of moonlight breaking the monotony if nothing else.

Suddenly, he heard the wooden stairs creak. He quickly cast a spell to light the candles up and fumbled with the stacks of papers. He had barely put them inside the files and was down to the last file left to put inside his backpack when the door opened. He didn't glance towards the person who broke his solitude, he continued on with his work. As fast as he could, he put the file inside, but the rashness of the action allowed an aerial recon picture to slip out of the file and float down to the bed. Placing the backpack at its place by his bedside, he turned. And was rendered speechless. There she was standing at the doorway, looking at the him. Her silver hair lay in sleek and beautiful curls around her head, a few stray strands framing her angelic face. Her flowy sky-blue dress fluttered in the slight breeze coming through the window.

He might've been staring, for she broke the silence in a tentative voice, "'Arry? Are you okay?"

It took him a few seconds to follow her query and formulate an answer. He said, hoping against all hope that his attempts at keeping his voice and face impassive was working, "Yes, I am fine. Just enjoying the beautiful night."

She paused a little and said, "Umm… okay. Well, everyone is downstairs and Mrs. Weasley asked me to check up on you. Dinner is in ten minutes."

"I'll be there."

She turned around and walked away. Even her walking was graceful, almost like she floated a few inches off the ground and glided around, her feet never making a contact with the harsh earthiness of the ground.

He gathered his wits about him and forced himself to calm down.

"It was all mere talking between acquaintances, Potter get a grip on yourself."

******************************AWTTS******************************

The rest of the days passed in a haze. He spent the time cooped up in Ron's room, working away. It helped his mind distract itself and also avoid meeting anyone other than Ron and Mrs. Weasley. Lupin was still angry with him over Sirius' death. He kept his distance with him with very pronounced efforts.

Harry didn't complain. He was used to being shunned. Long ago, Dumbledore had taught him an important lesson – the path of a lone warrior was actually a lonely one. Many would misunderstand him; many would resent him for what he did. But he had to do what was needful; he had to remain focused, determined. Petty reasons, silly personal matters and heartaches mattered nothing in face of the plight of millions.

He was finishing off his last report that evening. A day in between and then he'd be off to Hogwarts. Finally, he'd be free from having to see them every day. He was having a greater problem letting go with the other two; he cleared his mind by speaking at a sleeping Ron about Hermione. How and to whom does he do that to clear his mind of the other two? He had no idea. After trying a lot, he decided to give up trying in vain and carry the secrets with him forever. These were very simple secrets, nothing as humongous as the secrets about his powers that he normally had to keep silent about. He was planning to take the knowledge of his powers to grave already – since, he was sure he wouldn't find someone to share them with. This was just an added issue, nothing he couldn't handle.

While he was lost in his thoughts, downstairs a huge confrontation was brewing up.

Finally, Fleur had lost her patience.

Mrs. Weasley was working frantically to cook the feast that she had planned. Ginny and Hermione was helping the best they could. They'd barred Tonks from the kitchen because of her clumsiness. That only left Fleur.

She had seen the plight of the ladies in the kitchen and had politely asked if she could be of help. Ginny had snapped at her calling her the usual 'Phlegm' and that she was useless in the matters of doing useful stuff. Fleur had managed to stay calm at that and tell Mrs. Weasley that she was willing to help in anyway if she is taught how to help. Ginny had lost herself under the pressure of the work and had blatantly insulted her. She screamed at her face that it was no doubt she wasn't a proper girl, she was just a Veela – an object of enjoyment and of no actual usefulness.

Harry heard the scream and was racing down the stairs faster than a blink of eye.

When he reached, there was a full blown verbal warfare on going, the few males present in the house had gathered at the side-lines of the battlefield. Hermione had also removed herself from the fight. Fleur was so angry that she was speaking in heavy French accent; a few of her enraged retorts were in straight French. Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were keeping up too, with their screaming and screeching. Mrs. Weasley was trying to defend her child by saying what she was – she believed in what she was saying but she wasn't ill-mannered enough to say them out loud; she was doing so to support her daughter, Ginny, who had started the whole fight. With emotions running high, Harry feared Fleur might lose herself and really turn into a Veela.

And it was exactly what happened.

Feeling the feathers growing and the heat increasing, she ran outside. The whole group followed.

Fleur was now shouting out in muddled French because of the pain. She had forcefully brought about the transformation in spite of her not actually wanting it to happen. Her magic had recognized her anguish and had responded likewise. It was a defensive mechanism. But the untimely change against the conscious control of the person caused the immense amount of pain. She stumbled once her change was complete.

In her place was standing an ugly looking human-avian hybrid with pinkish flesh coloured feathers, fiery sparks danced off the feather tips and fire ran through her eyes. It screeched in her earlier annoyance. Every single male was stunned and spellbound because of the allure. Like always, Harry himself couldn't feel it but could guess at the reactions of the others. This incensed Mrs. Weasley and Ginny more. In their rage, they began completing each other's sentences.

"Look at you…"

"… you ugly half-breed."

The hybrid avian screeched in annoyance and protest. A glowing fire like wind surrounded her.

"You are not even decent enough to be a slave… "

"… you freak!"

And that blew Harry's fuse. He was in control enough not to blow the female Weasley duo up and to Hell, but he did give them a cold hard stare. Both of them shrunk back a bit.

The shouting had broken the spell of the allure and the males were thinking clearly again. Bill couldn't decide what to do. On one hand he remembered the beautiful body of Fleur. On the other hand, he was seeing the ugly creature that she could turn into and his mother's 'realistic' accusations. To him they did seem realistic. Most of the males stood there, the right course of action unknown to them.

Harry was not among those males. He relented from looking at the Weasley matron and started towards Fleur. She needed someone to calm her down, otherwise she'd continue hurting.

He was almost halfway to her, when Mrs. Weasley chose that moment to shout, "Harry, stop! She is using her foul powers on you…" He stopped and turned to glare at her. What he saw made his heart stop. Mrs. Weasley had casted the severing charm at Fleur. " _Diffindo!_ "

Fleur in her annoyance about being accused of controlling Harry Potter, lost every sense of control; coupled with her need to defend herself against the severing charm - a huge fireball blasted from her winged arms straight at the approaching charm.

Harry, though was facing the Weasley matron and didn't see the fireball. His only priority was to save Fleur. He couldn't use wandless shielding magic openly and he didn't have his wand with him. He ran towards an estimated point, aiming to intercept the severing charm – with his body if need be. A small cut would be nothing to him while it would cause a lot of more pain to Fleur. Fleur, in her Veela form, was a being of magic… rather pure magic. If hurt by something that is negative magic, like the severing charm was, her already present pain would increase many times, because of the cut it'd cause and spill magical blood; and because of the negative magic tainting her pure magic.

Everyone else stood there shell-shocked at what they were seeing. No one, not even Bill, moved to save Fleur when Mrs. Weasley attacked her.

Harry crossed the remaining distance in a second and jumped, hoping that it was enough to reach the point on time. He did reach the point on time. But the severing charm lashed against his torso, making a deep cut across his chest and his left biceps. Mrs. Weasley's anger had fuelled the spell and made it much more potent than was normal. He couldn't think any further. He was preparing himself to hit the ground, still under the effects of the time getting slow when being hit by something, when something huge, powerful and very hot collided against his back. He crashed in a smoldering hot ball of burnt clothes – he wasn't wearing his combat clothes like he normally did, due to the relaxed mood he was enjoying in his room – and charred flesh. The last sight he caught before black nothingness engulfed him was Dumbledore flashing in using Fawkes.

Fleur had calmed down almost instantly when her fireball hit Harry. She cried out in pain as her form quickly reverted back to human. Still in her torn robes, she ran up to where the unconscious boy lay, smoke rising from the grass that had burnt away in his contact. She dropped to her knees and kept apologizing till Dumbledore reached them and said, "He is in no state to listen to those words, Ms. Delacour. Save your breath."

Hours later, Harry was laid on his bed, Madam Pomfrey trying her best to save the boy. Fleur stood by the bedside guiltily. Dumbledore quietly made his way into the room and asked, "Poppy? What is the state? Will he be okay?"

"He will be fine. Alas! He will have to carry scars for all his life."

"Oh! Then it's nothing."

"How can you say that Albus? So young a boy to have something as dreadful as scars."

"I must say Harry has a fair share of his."

"You are right Albus. All his escapades have left him reminders."

"True… now Poppy, leave us. We have a few things to discuss."

Fleur was beyond shocked. The world renowned wizard would talk to her, alone? Oh! Maybe he'd scold her for hurting his student.

"Now, Fleur… I can call you Fleur, right?"

"Yes… "

She was beyond shocked.

"Fine, fine. Fleur, you must not feel guilty about what had happened. Our little hero here has the queer ability to get into trouble and save others very frequently. So don't lose your sleep over what has happened."

"But… But how many of the people he saves strikes him back?"

"You'll find that the number is surprisingly a lot higher than one'd expect. Now, I have places to go - you know, the burdens of responsibility."

"Yes, Professor. My father..."

"Is a wonderful man who does is job rather well and seriously. Fine gentleman and an expert in his subject; Jean-Claude is the pride of ICW. Well, I really should leave. Will you keep the company of our sleeping little hero?"

"I will, Professor."

"Goodbye, Ms. Delacour."

The old, wise wizard stepped out of the room and dragged the door close before walking away. Unable to decide what to make of the respected wizard's words, she sat on the chair by Harry's bed and gently placed a hand on his ruffled hair. The least she could do was keep him company.

An unconscious Harry was taken to Hogwarts by Dumbledore himself. For the first time ever, she cried. In the days she had spent by the bedside of Harry, she had started appreciating his soft but unruly hair, his hardened face with a few scars criss-crossing here and there, his princely nose and chin and his calm way of sleeping – the chest rising and falling in an unbroken sync. Seeing him being taken away felt like the loss of something valuable.

As soon as Harry was taken away, she stepped out of The Burrow, too. Harry's friends had left to catch the Hogwarts Express. She silently carried out her bag containing all her belongings and walked on. Just at the ward-line, Bill ran and blocked her way.

"Where are you going, Fleur?"

"Somewhere I am not treated as a freak beast."

"Please! Fleur listen to me… "

"No, Bill! You listen to me. This is over, okay? I can't think of us together anymore, not when I find the guy who promises me to save me from dark lords and their minions can't keep me safe from his own mother. Tell Mrs Weasley to find a 'beautiful' 'decent' 'proper' 'British' 'witch' for you to take as a bride, William Weasley!"

With that she turned and stepped out of the ward. Before Bill could say anything, she apparated away to her apartment in London, the one given to her by Gringotts. There she cried and lazed around, depressed, sad and feeling betrayed.

It would be three more days later when she got a letter from Hogwarts informing the safe revival of Harry and his continuation with Sixth Year classes.

 **FLASHBACK END**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thoughts And Actions.**

Finally, he was back to being 'normal'. Not that he minded. But, he would have liked it more if his brand of 'normal' was a little less chaotic and dangerous. A bit more normal 'normal'.

Whatever he might wish for, he didn't care if he had to act dumb regarding the Potions book. The first time he noticed the words claiming it belonged to a Half-Blood Prince, his mind was divided in its opinion. One part of him concluded that it was the property of Tom Riddle, with him being a half-blood by his own standards and considering himself the rightful ruler of Magical Britain. But the other part, the part with less prejudice and more logic, believed that he'd write something far showier. It also helped that he knew that a family existed called Prince. Now who was a part of that family, was a half-blood and had particularly remarkable skills in potion-brewing? He didn't know that.

Nevertheless, he didn't have to use that book at all. He just used it as an excuse for his potion-grades. And the fact that Professor Slughorn marked fairly gave him another excuse for his seemingly prodigious potion-making skills.

Yet, the truth was he was prodigious. The years he had spent fighting his own mind inside stasis had helped him unlock knowledge that was unknown even Dumbledore, unlock powers that can put Grindelwald's and Voldemort's combined powers to shame.

For almost every different subject, he came to excel in almost similar way. He'd be needed to learn something else and in attempting to learn it, he'd learn a lot of other stuff. Like when he had once ended up in later half of 5th century BC, the uncontrolled and warring sections of his mind would create different adverse scenarios. The Persian ruler, Xerxes, was on his way to attack Athens when he arrived at Trachis. He had to act very swiftly to mingle with the antiquated culture and people. The dress made him very uncomfortable and the absence of ready weapons unnerved him to no end. People who tried to get friendly with him found him very repulsive and irritable. To his relief, he found that language would never be a problem for him. Necessity was the mother of invention – the phrase had never rung truer in Harry's ears. When he became frustrated after spending two days in Trachis without being able to talk to a single person or make them understand that he needed food or he needed to find some way, his magic simply reacted and gave him the ability to comprehend every speech. The effect was really simple though. His magic picked the intent that the speaker was trying to express, converted it into the closest possible meaning that could be expressed in English and fed that meaning back into Harry's brain in simple English. Within a few days, he had learnt to work his magic so that he could also speak in that language fluently; after hearing it being spoken for a couple of times.

His magic was revolutionary

But he got himself a really bad impression in Trachis as someone who was unapproachable. It made his stay really difficult and after a week and a half, he upped and left.

On his walks through the arid lands, he came upon rocky grounds. And there were a few lakes scattered that could help him sustain himself. He learnt from a travelling merchant that there was a village nearby, called Anthela.

Somehow, a week later, he found himself at Thermopylae – donning the garbs of one of the fellow soldiers who were, along with him, defending the pass from the approaching Persian army. With shields raised and spears ready at hand, he looked from his position in the phalanx formation as thousands of Persian soldiers marched towards their position.

The commander, Leonidas, shouted orders as the Spartans shuffled and arranged themselves for the fight. It was then that Harry noticed his own arm. To say he was shocked would be a gross understatement. The bulging muscles rippled as he gripped the handle of the shield. He looked at himself and the shock was consistent. The ripped body wasn't his, he was sure. His magic was taking the requirements of the places he was visiting, and modifying his body as required. Even his age was being changed to fit the needs. There, he stood along with the other young men, same at height and build, aged 21.

Almost an hour later, hordes of Persians had struck the outer phalanxes.

The first wave failed to make any significant dent in the might or the numbers of the defenders. But it changed when the Persian soldiers began using slings to throw sharp stones at the militia phalanxes. They didn't have any proper shield with which they could possibly form a semblance of testudo – Harry remembered from his stray into the ranks of the Roman Praetorian Guards, long ago, in another similar travel across self-created dimensions. The slingers and hordes of armoured warriors made good work of the outer phalanxes. A few men broke ranks and ran back, up to the lines of the second phalanxes, the line that contained the phalanx unit which Harry was a part of. They seemed afraid and broken, having seen all their comrades die a savage death. The officer in charge of the second line of defenders shouted at them, called them losers, called them cowards and cursed them brutally with words that caused far more harm than whipping could – he called them disloyal and unworthy of defending their nation. It got the broken warriors patched in minutes and mere moments later they were picking up spears and joining the ranks with the fresh fighters waiting for the Persians to attack. Their eyes were bloodshot and their mouths were foaming in unnatural anger and hatred for the enemy.

The Persians soon followed up on their attacks. But this time, the skirmishers who had decided to stay and defend had them in range. Even before the slingers could throw a single stone, hundreds of javelins rained down on them. The mercenary troops that the Persians had brought as ranged troops were diminished to a pile of bodies on the dry and rocky floor of the narrow mountain pass. It had reverted a massacre but it had cleared the men of their weapons. They picked up spears and swords from the weapon stores hidden behind the boulders, and joined the defending line of phalanxes. A couple of minutes later, a sight made the defenders' blood run cold.

Hundreds of warriors were charging at their lines. They have thrown all caution to air; the brave hoplites rearranged themselves into flexible but tighter formations with small numbers gathered in a large number of groups – effectively preparing for a fight to death. Once the first of the Persians collided against the front layer of the hoplites, Harry channelled a bit magic into his arms and torso. He gripped the long spear tighter and thrust the shield outward. Soon enough, enemies were coming through the breaks the fallen hoplites of the front layers had created. He barely had any time to think before a warrior wielding a scythe like sword collided against his shield and another scantily clad soldier carrying a short-sword he'd stolen from a fallen militia hoplite ran into his spear. He pulled his spear free and looked around for an enemy. A Persian bastard wearing chainmail armour was slashing away madly at a pair of Greek militia. He rushed to their aid. He blocked an attack from the mad-man and distracted him allowing the wounded duo to escape. The duel he was fighting took up all his concentration; adrenalin rushed and his heart thumped away, pumping more and more blood, allowing him to fight on. After his opponent fell to a nasty thrust from his spear, he locked into a mass fight; he remembered nothing after that. The heat of battle had taken away his conscious thoughts and the blood-lusting monster inside himself had given in to the temptation.

His consciousness came back when a sharp pain in his chest yanked away the soothing blanket of darkness. He slowly opened his eyes and squinted, there was a fire nearby. When his vision stopped being a dismal drunkard and his eyes could focus once more, he looked again. The night sky was dotted with multitude of twinkling stars. A cool wind blew in from the arid lands outside the rocky base of the mountain pass. The barren lands with loose grainy and dust like soil cooled, and heated, very fast.

He tried to shift but a jolt of pain assured him that it wasn't the right course of action. He haltingly turned to his left and looked – apparently, he lay on the ground, his head supported up from neck upwards against the side of a boulder. All around him, on the rocky ground, were strewn the bodies of Greek and Persians alike. Broken spears, torn clothes and blood was an ordinary sight in the aftermath of a battle at the battlefield. It was no exception.

Suddenly, the pain in his chest began getting worse. He tried to sit up, a stabbing pain gripped his nerves and remained till he lowered himself back again. He took care to look at himself this time.

He had stifle himself from crying out loud when he saw the pilum that had pierced his chest. He calmed himself down and started thinking why he was still alive. And the answer came to him like magic. It was Magic!

He had reinforced his torso with magic before joining the fight. That same magic was preventing from something to happen. One way or the other.

A ruffle of feet was heard. He quickly went back to lying down like a dead man, acting his best to seem inconspicuous. He heard faint arguing.

"The others must've fled."

"No! It can't be! The King will have surely won the battle. He is a great leader."

"Does it look like we won the fight?"

"How could you know from this mess of bodies? When we ran away after the attackers crashed against the second line, our men were winning!"

"But still, we lost…"

The voices slowly faded.

Harry lay there quietly contemplating his course of action. After what felt like ages to him, he came to a decision. He calmly removed the magic surrounding his torso. Slowly, bit by bit, the magic retreated.

It wasn't long before black spots appearing in his vision; he closed his eyes to prevent such a sight. The pain doubled as the magic left its protective shielding, and he winced in the added pain. Surely, all the magic was removed. He was feeling so lazy; such an engulfing need to rest. He relaxed in the knowledge that his death only meant he would return back to his reality.

As the last bit of magic left, his chest and neck was flooded with the blood gushing out of the wound that the still sticking out pilum had created. At the last moment, before all consciousness left him, Harry resolved never to go anywhere unarmed – to never be without his equipment ever again.

His resolve had made him to work to make his mindscape summonable. It took significant amount of concentration and magic at the beginning. After summoning a single SMG, an UZI to be exact, from his mindscape armory, he found himself waking inside his actual mind from a deep trance, sweating profusely like he'd done rounds with a marathon runner and feeling light-headed. After the disoriented state has subsided, he noticed the impossibly low reserves of magic in his core; and, he still had a lot of fighting to do against the insane and errant sections of his mind.

After a lot of tries, spaced between a couple of days after each try, he had made it battle worthy. It took him barely any concentration or time, just a bit too much of magic. A not so hefty price to pay in the heat of battle, especially if he could summon an RPG7; after all there was a saying – "what isn't solved by a slap, has a solution in explosives" or something like that. He'd read it in some book written by an author with a strange meaningless name which even contained numbers. How could that be the name of someone, he'd wondered. That is, until he came across the fact that people used alternative names to hide their actual identity; it was called a pen-name, or a pseudonym. He made one up for himself, too. He swore to himself that if he ever found himself with things going downhill from the worst he'd prepared for, he'd change his name and blow the shit out of that stupid Riddle with a nuclear warhead and vanish in the muggle world.

And while he was training himself in summoning, he remembered something.

Long ago when he was a child, he used to watch the movies the Dursleys saw. Many of them showed soldiers who fought on other planets, spaceships that could travel to other worlds and weapons that could destroy such ships. When he grew up and found out his mindscape after fighting against the mental oppression of the Kroilints, in one of his first travels in the mental battlefields, he found the place a very well defended military base, with rather haphazardly included space tech. While the guards carried normal firearms, there were laser canons fitted on turrets. The tanks seemed normal enough, only they fired fiery balls of blue energy.

He spent days incorporating his new found knowledge on space warfare into his minds defences. Unknown to him, his knowledge morphed his mindscape completely. By the time he finished, he was back at Hogwarts for his third year.

He received as big a shock as Snape, when the said Potions professor tried to use passive legilimency on him. The mindscape was something he didn't recognize. It had a whole system of thousands of planets, with extremely tight defence systems. Even before Snape's attack could reach his shields, multiple intergalactic missiles were launched from the outer rim. They collided against the offender and blasted it to dust specks. But knowledge of his mindscape couldn't be allowed to be left with someone else. A patrol flotilla was dispatched which leaved the security of the shields and obliviated every single information regarding Harry's mind from Snape's memory. Then, a repulsor beam from the lead patrol ship shoved him out of Harry's mind.

Outside, Snape felt a kind of dislocated from reality. His carefully disciplined mind wasn't being its usual flawless self. There was a sort of discontinuity, but without any reason as to why he felt such. There was no missing memory or lost sequence in a chain of incidents. One look at the class and he'd forgotten his initial worries about his own mind and rushed towards the Longbottom scion to prevent a blow-up.

Harry had sighed in relief.

Harry's thoughts were broken when Ron confronted him. He quickly looked around to find himself sitting in his favourite couch beside the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. Looking at the irate face of Ron and Hermione, he waited patiently for them to start.

The first words came from Ron.

"Where were you, Harry?"

"Doing something for Dumbledore in his office."

Hermione butted in, "Couldn't you have let us know that you'd go missing for so long?"

"I am really sorry, 'Mione. But I was called and set to work. Everything happened fast enough."

After a bit of chatting about his absence, Harry constantly using half-truths to evade the pointed questions, they settled in a companionable silence.

Suddenly, Ron sprang the mystery trap.

"So, Harry… What's bothering you?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah? Then why are you being so cold to us this year?"

"It is nothing Ron!"

"No! It is something. First you start giving me the cold shoulder. But you were being yourself with Hermione. Then when we came to school, you started avoiding her too! Tell us, what is it?"

"Like I said, Ron... There is nothing to say."

Hermione tried to save the day, "Ron, please don't… "

It fell on deaf ears. Ron's jealousy, fear and all the other complexes that worked in him came out in full force. Harry wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose because of the throbbing headache he could feel working up.

It was two in the morning. Harry sat at the same couch, looking at the fire. Ron and Hermione had left for their respective dorms a little after midnight. And they had only done so after declaring straight away that if Harry wanted to be a stuck up prat, he could continue being so; but he'll have to do it without them.

Ron accused him of leading them to dangers, of getting themselves hurt, of not being good enough to defend, and of getting Sirius killed. It should've struck him like a hot poker, but he had become numb by then. All the pent up emotions, all the old memories, everything had come back in a frenzy. He was hurt so much that the pain had numbed; he'd gotten used to it. Just like he wanted! No feelings, no holding back!

After Ron had completed his ranting, he was sweating for shouting so long. His face was red and he was panting. After recovering for a bit, he calmed down a little and said that he was done being friends with Harry.

With that said, he turned towards Hermione and asked what she wanted to do. Harry looked in slight surprise as she, for the first time, sided with Ron and slowly walked away to her dorm. Ron walked away too.

Harry sat there thinking. His thoughts fleeted around on different topics; and, finally it settled on the first time he had discovered his special powers.

After his fight with the spirit of Voldemort in his first year, he was attacked by it. The spirit had passed through the body of Harry when he was holding the Philosopher's Stone. The negative magical backlash from the spirit's attack had activated the healing powers of the Stone and at a moment of grave danger, it has chosen the person in danger as its master. The Stone melted into liquid and seeped deep into the skin of Harry's palms and mixed into the bloodstream. Due to the heavy influx of magic, he only fainted for a few seconds. He was wide awake to watch himself absorbing the Stone, to his great horror. The insane amounts of magic kept pouring in and Harry's core had to stretch itself several times, quite painfully so, to accommodate all of it. But soon enough, stretching wasn't an option and aided by the arcane magic of the Stone and Harry's already impressive core, his magical channels were replaced with wide channels full of magic till they started replacing all his magical pathways with channelized magical cores.

And then alternate planes started forming out of the residual magic.

Harry was mesmerized by the light show. Scenes passed with blinding speed, in a complete disarray of colours and non-describable illuminations. Sharp jolts of pain punctuated the scenes. He was used to pain, though, and did not lose concentration from the beautiful myriad of magical orchestra occurring around him.

At long last, the planes stopped dividing and spreading. They had turned completely intangible and ethereal. They'd be accessed by their master when he needed them, not before.

The Stone, having finished its mission, gave one last surge and added its healing ability to its master. After it has done so, it broke down into molecules and harmlessly mixed with his bloodstream, flowing on along with the other blood cells in perfect harmony. Harry had received the power he'd use to defeat Riddle.

That summer, when he was starving under the Dursley supervision, he fell unconscious. He remained unconsciousness throughout the whole night. In the morning, his condition worsened. Almost at the brink of coma, his magic decided that it was too much. It reacted violently, yanking him away and shoving him into his mind where the Horcrux inside his head had already activated. Thus had started the war between minds, Harry's real one and Riddle's enchanted and contained one aided by the parts of Harry's own that have been affected by Riddle's darkness.

In the reality, the magical explosion that was caused by the ministry trackers was causing quite a chaos. The Department of Mysteries had to call in the great Albus Dumbledore when even they failed to find a reason behind it. Dumbledore's search took him to the familiar regions of Surrey. He apparated into Harry's room, only to find his favourite student waking up. He asked Harry if he knew what had happened.

Harry described everything to him. Just at the moment he completed his story, his aura projected strongly.

Dumbledore was shocked. Such a strong aura, that too uncontrolled! He remembered Harry's words from the Hospital Wing – "Sir, I absorbed the Stone!"

He'd dismissed that as young mind's imaginations. Now he wasn't so sure.

He painstakingly interrogated further, every single detail, every insignificant point. He had never heard such an effect of Horcrux. It might've had something to do with the fact that it had a living soul container. Legilimency wasn't successful either. His probe was met with the sights of a fortified camp. He tried to move towards the imposing walls but before he could move a single pace, a tubular structure at the top of the walls blasted him in bright colours. He was thrown out of Harry's mind.

The student and professor duo chatted for a long time. Finally, Harry proposed that Dumbledore bind his powers and train him to use his powers. It was mostly because he wanted to set at peace the worries of the elder wizard that the powers would bring more than enough undue attention towards Harry.

So began the rigorous training of Harry. He trained himself in the ways he had learned from his battles inside his mind. And at the end of the year, he confronted the problem of Basilisk. While the story that he had defeated the Basilisk with Gryffindor's sword was true, in reality there was a lot of skill involved rather than sheer dumb luck. Didn't stop him from getting bitten though. And eventually healed by Phoenix tears.

That summer, his mental battle worsened. Harry told Dumbledore that he knew how to create a temporal stasis - Dumbledore had to put Harry in such stasis. Once frozen properly, Harry fought the battle inside his mind with utmost ferocity. For five years inside his mind Harry learnt to become a vicious warrior, mighty with the ability to bend magic to do whatever he wanted to, within reason and, even for his colossal reserves, power. After a month in real life, he broke out of the stasis, effectively three years older biologically. Dumbledore finalized the binds on Harry's powers and trained him in the more sane magical arts before he returned for his third year at Hogwarts.

Harry's line of thought broke at that point.

He realized that he'd been reminiscing his life. A yawn made him aware of the time. It was very late in the night. He stretched his body a bit, huffed a bit and strode around in the common room to get rid of the laziness setting in. He smiled at the half-forgotten memories of the various travels he'd undertaken. A few were more memorable though. Even his eidetic memory couldn't hold any more information than it did, after all – more than five years' worth of information was no small feat to be remembered. He remembered the lessons learned well enough, just not the particular incidents.

After going in a few circles, his mind settled on the matter of his lost friends. It was better that way it concluded. Without any friend, Voldemort will have no one to hurt to get to him. He could fight without a care, without anything holding him back. If only he could get rid of the picture of Fleur in her ball dress at the Yule Ball in his fourth year from his head. And the picture of Dora wearing her Weird Sister shirt and jeans, smiling away because of a joke at her fake clumsiness that she wanted everyone to believe was true. He saw through the act right away. A rather poor act it was; she wouldn't be an Auror with her explosive bursts of clumsiness. And while her special ability caused her some orientation problems, that fact that she was well adjusted was proven when she fought at the Department of Mysteries. He heard her talk to people and pieced together bits of relevant conversations only to come to the conclusion that she wanted people to like her for the real her. So she put up the act of clumsiness, it was her test to find out who looked beyond it and saw her true self. She just liked Lupin, for reasons unknown; even he didn't find her act.

She'd never know that someone did see through her act, if he could help it.

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 _ **A/N: If anyone was wondering, Harry's mindscape is not that of Star Wars. His mental world and its defences are a convenient amalgamation of whatever things related to war he'd ever seen. The mental world is a representation of space because of Harry's fascination with HALO that he'd seen Dudley playing.**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Their Finest Hour.**

"You called me, Sir!"

"Come in, Harry. And, close the door behind you."

Harry paused a beat and turned. In a flourish of wand, he weaved a complex pattern of wards and charms on the door before striding up to the Headmaster.

Dumbledore said, chuckling, "I wasn't aware of the army that was waiting outside the door to begin a siege… Harry?"

He scratched his head and answered, "Uhhh… Constant Vigilance?"

"Very… True. Take a seat."

Harry slid into one of the seats facing the Headmaster.

"I was wondering, Harry… How bad were the battles inside your mind? You never did tell me the details, I only assumed how bad it was from your state after you emerged victorious."

"It was tough. And, telling the whole story would take a long time."

"So, you won't tell me now."

"Make it never."

"Alright, Harry. But what is this that I hear about a certain S.W.G."

"Nothing ever misses you, old man. Well, they are some very special warriors that I have phased in from my mindscape and then trained in alternate physical planes

myself to create a fighting force who can match Riddle's army. I have made up their backgrounds and infiltrated them in the magical communities of US."

"How do you create physical planes?"

"By means of phasing."

"Now what would that mean?"

"That means… You know what? It means a hell lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo that will make your head spin and hurt if I start on the lecture."

"Then we shall leave the matter here, I guess…"

"Yeah… And get on with what you wanted to tell me, too."

"You must be wondering why I called you?"

"Actually, no. I have a few ideas and I am sure you'll be speaking about one of them."

"Really? Care to explain?"

"Sure! You are either going to give me a mission which will really please me. God knows I've been without some proper action and cooped up in this castle. Or, you are going to lecture me about making up with Ronald and Hermione, like you've been doing for so long now. Or, you are going to give me a hell lot of philosophical bull-shit that is going to go round and round in riddles that require the other riddle to be solved to understand and the chains go on without the slightest chance to crack its meaning!"

Ignoring his rant, Dumbledore said, "I wanted to talk to you about our future plans."

Harry sighed and leaned back on the chair, "Philosophical bull-shit then."

Ignoring the muttered comment, Dumbledore went on a detailed explanation of what he planned to do and Harry's part in them.

About an hour later, Harry stood there, his body slightly hunched over the table and his eyes giving away every bit of the fiery anger he was feeling.

"I am not going along with those stupid plans. Snape might be indebted to you and hence has to follow you blindly; I will not!"

"Harry, listen…"

"No, I won't."

"The wizarding world needs to fall if it is to be saved, Harry!"

"WHY?"

"Try to understand… If we win today, which I've no doubt you will if I allow you to attack now, the wizarding world will not have seen a revolution. It needs a change direly, Harry. Otherwise, it will die out."

"But it doesn't explain why you have to take this step!"

"Like I said, Harry. Voldemort needs to be goaded into coming clean with his intentions and taking control. And he will never do that in my presence."

"Go into hiding then?"

"What then? You win the war, the Order swoops in and creates a temporary government and makes the necessary changes and you bring me back. Once they see me, the common people of Wizarding Britain will celebrate and slowly go back to old ways. I AM THE LAST LIVING PROOF OF DAYS GONE BY!"

"BUT THERE HAS TO BE A SOLUTION TO THIS THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE…"

"HARRY! They need a strong enough reason to fight, to change. A fleeting reason like Voldemort will not help; more so if you emerge victorious – because they will think that everything is alright if you win. People don't see the system from the top like we do, and hence, we can see that it has rotten from its foundations. It needs a strong kick on its door to bring it down, and then the people I've so painstakingly gathered will start rebuilding it. Not to my idea of perfection… to their idea of what is needful, supported by the masses. And they will do the right thing when they are constantly reminded of what price was paid in the war, when they remember the deaths… Cedric, Sirius… ME!"

Both of them were standing by then. And panting from the shouting match.

After gathering his breath, Harry spoke first, "I understand, Sir. But I still don't like it."

"Neither do I, Harry. And the same goes for you too. They may not know it; but the people doesn't need a hero, they need a soldier who gets the job done. So your part of the plan…"

"Will be completed, Sir. Don't worry."

"I am really glad to have you as the leader of this fight, Harry. I might be experienced, I might be powerful even by modest standards, but I don't have the will to fight with grit and conviction. To take a decisive action. To attack and destroy the enemy."

He paused and stated, "You are exactly what this war needed, Harry – a leader who has been there and done it all!

The teacher-student duo walked by the side of the lake as the sky cleared and wisps of light started appearing across the dark skies of Scottish Highlands. They had come down by the lake-side after their argument to clear their heads and spend a little time cooling down and mending their relationship.

 **####################################**

Harry sat in the Chamber of Secrets as he tried to find out a way to fight without getting all the people awed at the display his powers were sure to cause. He went about on different tangents, different plans and innumerable theories, only to reach a block. In every plan, it somehow came down to suppressing his powers. But if he did that, how would he perform the Blood Magic needed to take down Riddle?

He was getting mad with his inability to come up with a plan. After spending another couple of hours going in loops, he punched the ground in annoyance and said to himself,

"Crap! Damn this all… I'll just create a spell that activates the Blood Magic needed. That being done, I'll bind up the powers and fight with my 'normal' magic and the guns that I designed for my team. Maybe, they will be of some help too."

Fawkes flashed in and informed him that Albus needed him.

He quickly made his way through the castle to the office.

Upon entering, he found the Headmaster waiting in travelling clothes.

"Why such a dress, Albus?"

"Why, I am going to the next great adventure of course! And an adventure demands travelling clothes."

"Only you, Albus. Only you can joke about your own death. Anyway, it would have been little more believable if your idea of travelling clothes was something that was actually suited for travelling rather than looking like a sleeping gown. Really, Albus? Ducks and stars?"

"I find them rather amusing."

No more words were wasted as the headmaster calmly brought out the required portkey.

"So, you still plan on being a martyr?"

"Yep, that's the plan!"

"Albus! This is not the time to adopt stupid accents!"

"Oh… then what time is it?"

Harry just groaned and face-palmed.

 **####################################**

When they reached the island, Harry had a thought. Stepping off the boat, he asked away.

"Albus, you did say Soldy made good work of the Withering Curse, didn't you? How exactly did he do it?"

"He transfigured a grand looking lion from the debris and enchanted it to take the Horcrux from where it was. The curse was on the Stone. And it got the face of the Lion. But I was wondering how a non-living thing was affected by the Curse, or why a non-living transfigured animal would even be able to approach the human intent wards around the stone that prevented anything else to fetch it. What I found was shocking… "

They had reached the top of the island by then.

"…As I found the enchanted lion held a certain amount of sentience that should have been impossible to be reached by enchanting or anything else, for that matter. It was enough to fool the wards into thinking it as a strangely foolish human that was entering its bounds."

"All that was very informative and all… But I can't help but notice that you haven't got off as scot-free as you are implying. Did it happen while you were testing?"

"I don't know what you are… "

The look on Harry's face decided him to change his mind and tell the truth – for they clearly showed the knowing look he himself was so famed to use when he had upper-hand in knowledge or information.

"Well… Yes."

Harry gave a look at his withered pinkie, sighed and kept moving up.

Harry reached the basin first and turned to help him up. When Dumbledore was up and steady, he said again, "Do you want to protest against my assumption that since that curse had affected your finger and is slowly but surely eating away inside you, you want to go out with a bang and a few jobs done? Like killing at least a dozen metaphorical birds in the bush with a single thrown stone?"

"No, I won't refute your claims… And very aptly said, Harry!"

Harry very clearly knew what he had to do, still he hesitated to do it. Regardless of his reservations, he had to do it. Against his better judgement, he kept following Dumbledore's orders. Almost at the end of the painful process of force feeding Dumbledore the Dementor Potion in the basin, he couldn't take it anymore.

Hoping to give the old man some relief, he drank the last gulp of the potion himself. It was absolute worse than he had felt in years that he remembered. But maybe after so much he'd gone through, the pain has simply numbed? Just like the pain of losing the friendship of his closest friends? Just like having to literally torture Dumbledore with his own hands?

Whatever it was, he was expecting far more… troubles than he was currently having. And that worried him. He knew something bad was going to happen. He was having a bad feeling that his rotten Potter luck was just waiting to show its face.

Dumbledore was panting, yet he had gained some consciousness and recovered from the pain a bit. He was faintly asking for water. In his hurry to get the headmaster some water, he forgot his own code of action – summed up in a phrase, "Constant Vigilance".

Just as he dipped the goblet in the water, a commotion began. He barely noticed the inability of the goblet to hold water when a rotten hand snatched at him from the water. He struggled to get back and put a bit of distance between himself and the strange hand – it wasn't a hand anymore. Hundreds of dead copses were coming out of the water. Harry knew what they were. He'd encountered them when he went down into the pyramid when his mental battlefield shifted to Egypt in the era of World War 1. The British army camp also served as an archaeological digging site of which he had taken advantage and gone down into the depths of the pyramid and explored a bit – the tales of unknown magics had fascinated him. And he had encountered the undead corpse army. They were called Inferi, less sentient and dangerous than a Zombie but equally dangerous because the ease of making them allowed for multitudes of them being built. There was a saying among the Soviet during World War 2 – "Quality is better than quantity, but quantity has a quality of its own." About the same applied for Inferi.

He stumbled several times on his way up. Upon reaching Dumbledore, he quietly stunned the headmaster to ensure the problem of thirst didn't cause any more pain to the old man than he already was in. Then he turned his attention to the huge undead army headed their way. He pointed his own wand straight at the approaching enemy and spoke a single word, " _Arduro_."

Almost similar to a fiendfyre, except instead of a huge serpent, an immense lion made of flames leapt out of his wand and rushed towards its master's foes. It trampled the Inferi which burned up promptly, ate away at a few others which simply disappeared into its fiery jaws, and mostly went about slashing its powerfully muscled arms, throwing the Inferi into air and burning them up due to contact with naked flame while they were airborne. It was a sight to behold.

By the time the lion was done and had disappeared in a flash of flames, Dumbledore had mostly recovered from the pain inflicted on him. And as powerful a wizard he was, he simply couldn't stay stunned long. He rose to his feet haltingly. Harry turned at the sound of weak clapping, to find the headmaster standing with a subdued posture but his pride and happiness emanating off him in waves.

He said, "I have been successful, Harry! You used a dark spell, but without giving away under its luring appeal. That is why your fiendfyre evolved from a serpent to a lion, a symbol of bravery, honour and pride. Also as pure as could be found among non-magical animals. The flames were also a lot more physically corporeal than just flames that a fiendfyre is made. Last, but not the least, the control you showed over the flames comes from your purity of heart. You have proven to me, Harry, that there is no Light or Dark magic, only the intent of the caster. Only the deeds of its wielder."

"You mean, all those time you taught me the philosophical bull-shit, you were trying to make me able to use lethal magic without falling to the darkness of maniac-like killing spree?"

"Yes, Harry."

Harry looked at him and slowly walked towards him. He stood in front of the old wizard and said, "Thank you, Albus. I knew how to do it, I knew I could control it, but I wasn't yet ready enough to use this particular branch of magic yet. I was hoping to use my brand of magic for offensive purposes when the time came." With that he embraced him, both enjoying it – a grandfather feeling proud of his grandson, a young man feeling happy to have found some semblance of caring and love from an adult he considered his grandfather. They were united as a family in all but blood, finally.

Alas, according to Dumbledore's plan, it was also the last few hours of life that the headmaster had left.

 **####################################**

Back at the Astronomy Tower, Harry shed exactly a dozen teardrops when he complained of the unfairness of the situation – that he had to allow the death of Dumbledore just when he had found a reason to actually love him for the part of family he was.

It took Dumbledore a lot of time to calm Harry down. The boy had much experience that helped him to stay in control when faced with such adversities, yet it still showed that he was a human who appreciated the love he felt for his family, a human who was fighting not for the sake of fighting, but because he was needed to do it.

They quickly took positions when the footsteps were heard. Harry in the shadows of the staircase and Dumbledore by the open balcony. Soon enough, the group of Death Eaters were there in the Tower, blocking the only exit.

The Malfoy scion was at the head of the group.

"Mr. Malfoy, don't do this." Dumbledore played the part of a pleading old man.

Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore with an _Expelliarmus_ and pointed the wand at him again.

Bellatrix hissed, "Do it!"

Draco's hand wavered. His shoulder's slumped in clear internal conflict.

Bellatrix kept taunting, "Baby Malfoy can't do it. Worthless, pathetic… "

Draco couldn't take anymore. He tried to cast the killing curse, but before he could finish the wand motion, Snape came in as planned.

"Stop, Malfoy. Are you a fool? Don't you realise?"

"Realise what?" Draco snapped.

"That as a minor, the Ministry can force you give up your wand and memories for checking? That all of us will be compromised since we are in your memory? They can't catch Death-Eaters, but they can definitely catch you!"

"So what? My family… "

"Don't worry, Malfoy. I have Dark Lord's orders to do your job and you'll still have your wish fulfilled."

"Snape, don't intervene!" Bellatrix hissed and took a step forth threateningly.

"Take it up with the Dark Lord if you want. Now let us finish this job."

Greyback had his wand pointed at Dumbledore all the time. He stepped back as Snape strode forth.

Dumbledore, deceptively, made a pleading face and said, "Severus, please?"

Though it was worded in a questioning tone as a request for help, Harry knew the plan and the double meaning of those words. Dumbledore wanted Snape to finish the job fast.

Snape raised his wand and calmly said, " _Avada Kedavra_ ".

The lifeless body of the great wizard was sent flying backward. Out of the Astronomy Tower's balcony. Out into the open space. Out into the wet night.

Harry followed the Death Eaters to the Great Hall. And he found a massive fight going on. The Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army was fighting a full scale war against the fleeing Death Eaters, in an attempt to block their escape. He gathered his magic and entered the hall. Rowle had blasted huge portions of the Hufflepuff table in order to distract the defenders. Harry fired off a cutting hex at him which he dodged and returned fire with an organ liquefying curse. Their duel began. But he didn't survive Harry's blazing fast casting and superior arsenal of spells, all of them overpowered. A _Reducto_ crushed his chest and sent him flying into Amycus Carrow who was slowly winning the edge over Tonks and Ginny. In the moments distraction, Harry leapt into action taking place in front of the defending duo and ordered, "Tonks, get Ginny and get deeper into the Hogwarts, you'll be safe there."

"No, Harry! You can't fight them… "

"I said, GO!"

There was something in his voice that she couldn't protest against. It was the order of a battle-hardened general, not a young sixteen-year old. She picked up Ginny who was holding her bleeding left hand tightly with her right hand, and made her way through the chaos.

Harry fired a few cutting hexes at Amycus and then blasted his sister Alecto with a bludgeoning hex; she was fighting Hermione and Luna into defensive.

In the next few minutes, Harry had out-duelled, out-fought and made good work of almost all the Death Eaters; most of the ones who had fought him were dead – Harry ensured the scene looked like accidental deaths rather than intentional ones. Like crushed chests by bludgeoning hexes, pierced by stakes formed out of broken wood out of the house tables when he had banished them and so on.

Then the mishap occurred. Greyback physically assaulted William. Harry looked at the charging Greyback and knew it was too late to warn Bill. He himself started running towards Bill. Seeing Harry run towards him, he got startled and drifted a bit to the side – it potentially saved his life. Greyback could only bite his shoulder. He growled at the failed attempt and reared back for another bite while slashing Bill's face with his dirty and long nails.

His second bite closed in on human meat. But this time, it tasted different. He looked to find he was biting a muscled hand. It was Harry's hand. Even in his pain, Bill looked on with shock as Harry fought a physical fight against a half-werewolf. The moment Greyback attempted to bite Harry's head off, Harry raised his hand to block it. The jaws clamped on his arm, again. In a fraction of second, Harry jerked his hand to lower his enemy and stabbed him clean with a dinner knife straight through his throat.

The jaws relaxed and Greyback fell dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood, blood gushing out of his punctured throat.

Seeing the death of Greyback and the rest of the Death Eaters, Bellatrix retreated and ran out. Snape dragged Draco out by his collar and followed Bellatrix.

Harry followed them outside the castle. Near the end of the wards, Harry fired off a chain of spells. The three had to stop and counter to shield themselves. Draco, Snape and Bellatrix were held back as Harry attacked them, holding them to a three vs one duel. A duel he was winning.

A spell from Bellatrix caused him to dodge and Snape took the opportunity to run away with Draco. Harry only had the chance to disarm Draco before Snape side-along apparated him from outside the Hogwarts wards. Harry focused on Bellatrix. She couldn't take what he gave her. Her shields fell to his relentless strikes. Stunning and binding her up, he fell to his knees. The loss of Dumbledore was catching up with him now that the fight was over.

He trudged back to the courtyard which was below the astronomy tower. The Hogwarts staff and students alike had assembled there. When he approached, someone saw him and word quickly spread – the crowd parted to allow him passage. Soon, he was standing in front of the body of Albus Dumbledore, his face a stoic one carved out of stone. He knelt down beside him and said in almost a whisper, "You will be avenged, Grandfather. I shall see to it, and ensure your legacy lives on forever. You've done more for the wizarding world than anyone realizes. Albus Dumbledore will not be forgotten; neither will he have died in vain. I'll lead MY forces to victory – the time has come."

Ginny tried to go and hug the distressed boy, but in her illusion of the Boy-Who-Lived, she didn't realize she was in the company of a man who has seen and done it all. She tried to calm him like a child; saying things like, "Everything will be okay", "It's alright, Harry". It was the wrong thing to say.

Harry turned towards her and quietly stood up, breaking away from her hug. He said in a cold voice that hinted at danger, "Ginevra, you have no idea about anything. Don't talk about things you don't understand."

"Yeah? I don't understand? Remember my first year? I had Riddle in my mind!"

"You don't remember any of it. You are only aware of anything amiss because you logically put the incidents into perspective, and puzzled out the answer – after we told you what had happened. You don't know anything."

She was rendered speechless.

"And, also, everything is not alright… Don't make the mistake of presuming so."

With that, he walked into the castle, into the darkness of the corridor caused by the light being emitted by the Dark Mark in the sky, a greenish light that seemed eerily similar to that of a Killing Curse.

The Deputy Headmistress raised her wand towards the sky.

 **####################################**

Bill's injury proved to be mostly disfigurement. But the permanent damage was done. He was afflicted with an uncommon form of Lycanthropy that was sometimes mistakenly referred to as half-were.

There was no such thing as a half-werewolf. You were either one, or you weren't. No middle ground. This uncommon form was called _Spectaris Amulus Emotioniacus_. A Roman name for an evolved Lycan. A Lycan who was not bound to changing only on new moons. Instead, he'd change whenever he became excited beyond a certain limit, without any pain – hopefully the small duration of the bite ensured that the limit was quite high, extremely high. Along with that, he'd acquire a few quirks like liking his meat rarer, being a bit more aggressive than he was, and a sense of arrogance, as if he was the leader of a pack of wolves. Nothing very bad, except for the changing part. Remus promised to help him get accustomed.

Bill's left leg was damaged. He broke the bones in it when Greyback collided against him and made him crash against a pile of rubble. It was healed… to an extent. A piece of enchanted wood had to be placed inside his leg to give it support. It wasn't too bad a thing as Bill said that it felt like a part of his bone.

As it turned out, it was Harry who had the worst possible trouble. He couldn't tell them that it was his shield that prevented Bill from getting afflicted by the real thing. And hence he couldn't say that in a hurry to save Bill, he'd forgotten to shield himself. Every single person gasped and then turned sorrowful eyes towards Harry, when Madam Pomfrey declared Harry was completely afflicted and a verified Lycan. It was Fleur who rushed to his side, held his left hand in her both and cried, all the while expressing how sorry she was that he had to bear the curse while saving Bill. The hostility amongst them had decreased greatly when they had worked through the year together at Gringotts. They were trying to rebuild their lost companionship once more and she was expressing her gratitude that Harry had saved Bill. And asking him to forgive them for being the reason of him getting afflicted.

Harry couldn't take it anymore. He blurted out, "Stop it! Shut up!"

He panted after his outburst, but continued a little later in a raised voice, "What do you think? I did it for Bill? I did it because I had one of my saving-people moments? Because I wanted to act the part of a hero?"

His voice raised by several decibels. "NO!"

"I did it for myself, for the peace of my mind, to appease the part of my mind that keeps replaying the images I want to forget… I DID IT FOR Y... "

He quickly cut himself by placing his palm tightly over his mouth. He realised what he was going to blurt out and mentally kicked himself for getting so easily worked up.

Everyone was looking at him in shock. No one knew what to say. He yanked the blanket off him and walked out of the infirmary.

It would be hours later that Hermione would find out and let everyone know that Harry was in the Chamber of Secrets; she showed the snake on the tap which had changed posture because of being recently opened.

 **####################################**

The funeral was a very depressing occasion. A lot of people had gathered; the Order of the Phoenix, the students and staff of Hogwarts, many business owners and a few others from ICW. They were wearing black cloaks and talking in hushed voices. Harry sat at a chair, unmoving, looking forward towards the altar that had been built in the Hogwarts grounds to house the corpse of Dumbledore. Everyone who saw him wanted to cheer him up. But their own depressing moods and the hint of cold steel in his eyes prevented anyone from approaching him.

In the meantime, with the death of Dumbledore, the Voldemort sympathizers were working quickly to seize power inside the Wizengamot. Once they had ensured their absolute majority, by bribes and threats, they called in an emergency session. In the session, they forced through a decision that Harry Potter was found guilty of the murders of several upstanding pureblood citizens of Wizarding Britain and should be thrown into Azkaban. With him being absent from the courtroom and no one to defend him straightaway, it was passed clean.

In spite of their desperate attempts, they couldn't prevent Minister Scrimgeour and the Head of DMLE, Amelia Bones, from passing the same judgement for Bellatrix LeStrange.

Half an hour later, a contingent of ten Aurors apparated into Hogsmeade and walked up to the castle. At the caste grounds, they came to the funeral grounds – led by Dolores Umbridge. They walked to where Harry was sitting and Umbridge proclaimed in loud voice that Harry Potter has been found guilty on several accounts of murder of upstanding pureblood citizens and has been decided to be put into Azkaban for a life sentence.

In front of ICW officials, and the Order of the Phoenix members, the Aurors arrested Harry who himself didn't put up much protest except a few scathing jokes against the incompetence of the Ministry.

In a period of a couple of days, the Light had lost its two most important leaders and bastions of hope. The darkness quickly engulfed the already gloomy environment. By the end of the week, the whole of Wizarding Britain was drowning under the onslaught of the forces of darkness, the forces of Lord Voldemort. The Death Eaters were winning… It was their finest hour.


	6. Chapter 6

**Time To Find Yourself.**

"What would you have done?" Ron's voice was probably heard all the way from Grimmauld Place to Hogwarts.

"Fought them! Protested! Done something… Anything!" Hermione's scream might've had just done the impossible and crossed the Channel.

It was almost two weeks after the arrest of Harry that the Order could meet up again, having to evade a lot of unwanted attention.

Tonks said from her couch, "Yeah… Anything that showed that we at least cared for him. We just let him be taken away…!"

She began weeping again. And even Remus was proving incapable of calming her down.

Fleur said the words that were haunting all of them.

"What must he had thought when we let him be taken away without a protest…" She wiped her eyes clear of all the tear drops, and continued, "He must've felt betrayed. After so much he had done for us! After he had just faced the death of Dumbledore…"

Bill pulled her closer to him and soothed her. He said, "Regardless of what he might've thought, I am sure Harry will never have wanted us to waste away like this."

"That is it! No mere teenager should have to do all that he'd done for us, or be needed to understand what he does!"

"Fleur, you don't know half or even quarter of what he'd done."

Everyone looked at the stoic face of Mad-Eye.

"He'd done stuff, even stories of which will blow everyone out of their minds, make them scream in terror and seek safety in the arms each-other." Coming from Moody, it was akin to being called the next Merlin; it was a common knowledge that he called Dumbledore by the name "Old Crotch".

The people inside the room gaped at the scary ex-Auror. No one could remember the last time they had seen Mad-Eye Moody show such high respect for someone; except Fleur, of course.

She said, "What do you mean? He is just a boy! I agree that he was most impressive in the Tournament and after that he had shown exceptional skills. But he couldn't have done something that would make someone as yourself say those things, could he?"

"I hear you said far less demeaning yet something of similar spirits back in his fourth year, Ms. Delacour?"

Fleur looked down with a flushed face.

"Evidently, you still haven't really learnt your life-lessons. Anyway, it is not my place to disclose what exactly he'd done. Just know this, Harry Potter is just a shell, a mere disguise. He really cares for who he considers close to his heart and will go against the world if it meant they'd be safe; God knows he has enough power to do so."

Mad-Eye turned and walked into the hallway leading to the stairs… He had a lot of things to do now that the leadership of the Order had passed onto him.

Lupin stayed quiet for a while before speaking out, "All that is beside the point; we must plan how to get Harry out of that hell-hole."

This caught the attention of everyone in the room. They looked at him incredulously.

Ron voiced his protest, "Are you insane? You want to go to that island?"

More than a few members of the Order grumbled out their agreement to Ron's loud protest. Even Tonks couldn't think of a situation where it could go well.

"Honestly! A visit to Azkaban island? What is Remus thinking?"

Lupin, on the other hand, snapped at them and said in a clear voice that Harry would have done the same for any of them. That got everyone to shut up and look guiltily. They knew it was true – actually more than enough of them had debts to him.

Before he could say anything else, Mad-Eye, hearing the shouting, came down and stood at the doorway taking in the quarrel.

Finally, he decided to interrupt.

"Do you have any idea what is the condition of that bloody island? You'd be lucky to even make it out of there alive, let alone get Potter out of that place." Everyone jumped at the sudden voice.

He went on and on about the new security on the island that he'd learnt from one of his old contacts inside the DMLE.

That night everyone went to bed, a little paler than usual. They were thinking of the impossible cruelty that went on inside Azkaban, and the fate of their young friend.

################################################

Inside the dreaded wizarding prison, a thin figure sat at the edge of his cell – one of the highest security ones. His every breadth left a misty cloud in front of him that dissipated slowly, its place being taken by the next one. The temperature was perpetually around freezing point in the high-security levels of Azkaban. Several factors acted towards it. The chilly sea winds acted much strongly near the top of the damp fortress. The cold, wet walls of Azkaban also kept the surroundings frosty. Finally, the two Dementor guards always present in front of the cell sucked in all warmth from the surroundings, making it colder than was normal.

The small figure sat in complete silence. It didn't move an inch from its place. The unnerving stillness concerned the Aurors who came for rounds. But they knew better than to show concern for the Boy-Who-Lived. After all they had families to feed and keep safe.

The hour passed in complete silence. Suddenly, the Auror in charge of that level, Mark Rowan, heard two footsteps. The Carrow brothers - cousins of the dead twins, the Wardens of the Prison, appeared near the edge of the staircase. Mark shivered at what was going to happen

The duo waved away the Dementors and entered the cell of Harry Potter. Mark watched as the tired and almost lifeless body was dragged out and carried away. One of the Carrows signalled him to follow them. He felt sick thinking about the sight he was going to have to see.

The group walked all the way down to the dungeons. Waiting there was Walden Macnair.

The three death-eaters hoisted the boy in chains, about four feet from the ground. Mark wanted to close his eyes; but he wanted to be alive. And that meant he had to comply with the orders and look on – the official reason was that he was there to provide security while the Wardens interrogated an enemy of State, charged with high-treason.

He had to watch on as Macnair peeled off small swaths of skin from the arms of the boy. As the Carrows repeatedly _Crucio_ -ed him. But the worst part was the fact that the boy uttered no word, no sound at the inhuman torture. No screaming, no begging for mercy; he didn't seem to break even a little. Mark feared for his life – he feared that the boy might already be dead.

But his only consolation was the vibrant green eyes that looked on with a burning fire in them. The silent rage glowed in his eyes as he looked at his tormenters.

Strangely though, they couldn't take his clothes off him. No knife, no spell could remove it off him. They became dirty with sweat and grime, but they never came off. They tried using _Diffindo_ to tear it off – to no avail. The place where the curse made contact with Harry's body, the cloth over that place got wet with blood, but the clothes wouldn't come off.

Three hours later, the nearly lifeless body of the boy was dragged back to his cell and forcefully thrown back in. The iron bar door closed with a clang and the Dementors glided back to their guarding stations by the sides of the entrance to the cell.

Mark dejectedly trudged back to his place by the staircase.

#####################################

That night, the it was the temperature of the island had gone down from being chilly to biting cold. That meant the temperature inside the cell of Harry decreased to sub-zero conditions. Icicles were forming from the ceiling. The whole fortress was drowned in a sea of damp darkness.

The clouds were clearing as the night deepened.

Harry was feeling very tired. He had endured torture for so long that he had lost count of days. He was feeling very sleepy, light-headed – like there was no problem in the world. He wanted to sleep. His hunger distracted him for a bit when a loud growl from his midsection indicated his starved condition.

Just as he had again entered the sleepy state, moonlight fell on the floor of his cell. Bright moonlight, in the shape of the cell's iron-barred window.

With a jerk, his head snapped back to clear conscious thinking. He struggled to his feet and looked outside the window. Sure enough, there was the moon, shining brightly – as white as cottage cheese. It was completely round, no indents or crescents.

The last thought that registered in his brain before a burning pain attacked his nerves was – "Today is a full-moon!"

The pain grew in leaps and bounds. It went from being unbearable to impossible. Death felt a better option than the searing, maddening pain.

He felt like nails were being hammered at his nerve endings; he was being skinned alive, roasted and seasoned with salt at the same time. His eyes felt like a jelly that was particularly acidic. He felt like his brains would burst. He couldn't breathe, he gasped for air – blood entered his windpipe along with air, causing him to choke and cough out, even in the pain.

When it seemed it couldn't get any worse, he felt his bones snapping and reshaping. Joints popped as they were remade to suit a predator. He felt his collarbone break before his endurance reached the end of its limit. He felt blood mix with his spit as his vision turned black, blacker than the pitch black darkness inside the fortress.

He regained his sense with the feeling of a palm on his forehead.

He turned his head slowly, but the hand pressed his head down and returned it to its previous posture.

"Good to see you are awake."

The voice was extremely familiar. It was like a voice he'd once heard a lot but wasn't used to it for a long time. It had a certain difference to it – like it was a heavier, mature and deeper version of a young voice he knew.

"Now, slowly turn around and try to sit up."

He did as he was asked. He saw the man. A very well built body towered at a very impressive six feet and a couple of inches. The darkness inside the cell covered his face in deep shadows, making it absolutely impossible to decipher any facial feature. Except for the hair. It looked just as windswept as his apparently did, in normal conditions. He didn't know what his stay in the prison had done to him, he didn't have the luxury of a mirror.

Suddenly, he realized that he was a human. He looked outside and it was still dark – a little faded, but still dark.

The man seemed to have realized his line of thought. He chuckled and spoke in a gentle voice, "Don't worry, Lycanthropy will never be a problem to you again."

"How…?"

"I said, don't worry about it."

Harry spent a few more seconds silently contemplating the words of the man. Another realization hit him hard. He was feeling fine, a little sore and sleepy, but just that! No pain, not even a residue of the searing hot pain that he was experiencing when he lost consciousness.

His questioning gaze was turned at the man. The man didn't disappoint him, he immediately said, "The absence of pain is my doing, I'm afraid."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"Well, I've got a long story to tell you if you wish to seek answer to your questions."

"I do."

"Then take this and drink up."

From thin air, he conjured a vial of a translucent cyan coloured potion. He took it hesitantly, and swallowed it at one go. He was sure the Basilisk venom magic in his blood would ensure his safety from any poison, if any was present.

There wasn't any.

But the potion did make him feel immensely better. He inquired about the potion. The man only gave him a flat look.

"Oh, right. So that is included in the explanation…"

"Yes, now get comfortable, it is going to take at least a couple of hours."

Harry went back to his position, sitting with his back supported by the wall.

The man began his story –

"Last year, you first experienced your spectral plane travel. From then on, you have transcended the bounds of space exactly three times. Those travels gave you training and helped you hone the powers you've gained from fighting your own mind. I have nothing to say about them."

But, the problem arose when you summoned S.W.G. and began making physical travels into your self-made planes. Unlike what you've been thinking for so long, those planes never got terminated once you travelled back to this one. Instead, in every plane you created and visited, you left behind a physical clone of yourself who started living their own lives; made their own decisions, and acted on their own. Most of them became quite proficient in magical and scientific fields. But a few of them exceeded standard limits of knowledge. They became wiser than anyone else and experimented with several concepts. The only common experiment they all did was Spatial and Temporal Manipulation. You following me?"

A flabbergasted Harry nodded.

"Good."

He seemed to be thinking a little. Coming to a decision, he said, "It would be get boring for you to have to listen to the whole story. I'll shorten it for you."

Harry, again, dumbly nodded.

"Well, suffice it to say that they all succeeded. And they started making daring and increasingly dangerous travels into time. By the year 2010, all the Harrys will have actively travelled to 2300 and beyond. They discreetly became parts of society and learnt everything they could. Then they began foraying into the past. Most of them were unable to find a way to well over Three Hundred years in future. They filled up that failure with travelling into the past, learning arcane arts, fighting with ancient weapons and joining famous people of those times in their quests or efforts, always remaining unnamed and in shadows.

The crisis started when a few of them travelled too far and destroyed their own lines; in war or otherwise. Their planes got warped and got destroyed eventually, becoming a point of discontinuity in space-time continuum.

When this happened too many times, the continuum lost its hold. The effect was catastrophic. Instead of The whole structure burning itself out; it started drawing on your reserves. Because of your vast cores, you didn't feel them. But since they had steady sustenance, they grew into a tangled mess of continuum lines.

What basically happened was, at the end of it all, you weren't affected much. But if they exist, the existence of this reality too is under threat."

"What can be done to prevent such a disaster?"

"There is one way... but..."

Harry waited patiently for him to continue. He did, after he had composed himself.

"Harry, I am you."

"Wha'…?"

"Yes, Harry. I am from 4512, the farthest any of the Harrys have ever travelled into future. The Earth gets destroyed somewhere around 3117 A.D. A very small fraction of humanity escaped into a few inhabitable planets of Alpha Centauri. Made possible only by the combined efforts of another Harry, who had travelled into my time from somewhere around 2500s, and me. We two have spent the rest of time in seclusion, trying to unravel the mysterious life of ours. What we discovered was a veritable mess of scrambled memories and several existences. Everything was tangled well out of proportions. We looked at the trillions of temporal and spatial connections that have criss-crossed each other and themselves several times without any pattern and concluded that only God could untie the knot.

Until, we came up with the rather childish concept of taking backups and resetting the system. It actually made sense! So we called up a few other Harrys from other planes and got to work. Our work was done on 6th December, 4000 A.D. I lost my last colleague in 4010 A.D. I worked alone for the next 500 years, supported by the powers of the Philosopher's Stone keeping me alive. At long last, the system was perfected.

The last two years was spent collecting every bit of vital information I thought would be needed. I secured the information and initiated the process to come back."

It took him a bit of time to comprehend the information.

"So, you came back to help me?"

"Yes, Harry. But, I don't have much time left. It will be no more than a couple of days after which I'll have to accept death and pass on. So, I'll give you two options. One, you take just the knowledge and work out the rest on your own. It will much less painful and does not include any dangers of being stuck in a temporal vortex for eternity. The other option is you allow me to transfer myself to you in the form of data. The data will embed itself wherever it is meant to go and bring about the necessary changes. Once that is done, I'll simply reset you back to the second before you met me. All the connections then will simply be removed and the temporal matrices that hold it will be destroyed. In the unlikeliest of situations, you might get stuck during the reset because of the quantum data embedded in you."

"Why do we need to remove the temporal matrices and connections?"

"It will be a pain to describe everything to you, Harry. But the safety of this world is at stake, and to say simply, that thrice damned tangled mess thrives on your power and you need to eliminate it to access your full potential. Forget about whatever assumptions or knowledge you were working on the basis of. It is time to learn them anew!"

"How long will it take?"

"About three hours."

Harry still seemed unconvinced. Here he was being given a way to get rid of every problem that sucked, at least the problems that were his. Once they were taken care of, the problems outside his own-self will be simple to handle. Yet, he was going to do something he hadn't done in a long time – trust someone. After Albus, he didn't think he could anymore.

But the benefits far outweighed the negative feelings.

Seeing him torn between the choices, the man sighed and let away a last secret.

"Once this is done, you can try and make your life… Even maybe do the one thing none of the Harrys had ever been able to do?"

Harry looked at his older clone and asked, "What is it?"

"Ask Fleur out?"

Like a flicker, the light in his eyes went out. He stayed like that for some time, with thoughts unknown to the older Harry passing through his mind. The light slowly came back as Harry's lips curled into a sad smile.

Finally, Harry let out held breath and answered, "Okay, let's do this then."

"Which one?"

"I'll go with the second choice…"

The night had significantly cleared by then. The horizon was lighter than the rest of the sky, even having a touch of orange. It was almost dawn. The guards would soon come to check the prisoners. The thought of guards made him remember the Dementors. The older Harry just laughed when he asked him about the Dementors.

He said, "I did mention about your prodigal Wandless abilities, didn't I?"

"You did…"

"And you realize that I am you?"

"Yes… Oh! You mean you banished them? Using Patronus?"

"No…", the older Harry drawled. "I destroyed them using Mage-fire. That is the version of Fiend-Fire you'll be using."

"Now, get ready for the process, we'll be phasing out to a temporary plane that is present on the same temporal matrix as this one. Will allow us to do our stuff without obstruction and anyone knowing."

##############################

The Ministry was riddled with Voldemort supporters. Yet, the Dark Lord didn't show himself. He wasn't ready yet. He had one last ritual to do before he would be able to master his old abilities and levels of power. In the meantime, he was content with the spies and supporters he had gotten inside Ministry and Wizengamot.

The first sign of trouble inside the Ministry arose when half the Dementors vanished overnight. They were guarding Azkaban when they vanished. When this news reached Voldemort, he was so confused that he forgot to be furious with the messenger.

Back at the prison, the Carrows were so busy trying to find out what happened to the Dementors that they forgot to torture Harry. The forces were scattered in search of the rogue Dementors.

Voldemort couldn't think of a reason, either. To quickly contain any threat, and to keep his enemy locked down till he was powerful enough to kill him and let the public know of his return, he sent away the few Dementors under his service to serve at Azkaban. They were very few to change the fact that at least one level would remain unguarded.

When it was looking like the Aurors will have to step in, the older Carrow cousin thought of an ingenious plan. He placed the high security prisoners so that each cell had two of them. The number of cells required halved and the Dementors were able to return to 'efficient' service.

When the Dementors carried in Harry's cellmate, he was doing push-ups. He had returned after spending six months in the phased out plane, only to find that only a couple of minutes had passed in his plane. He rested after having spent most of the six-months training and stressing himself to learn everything from scratch. He was awake by the time the first ray of light fell on his cell-floor. He knew he'd have to keep training to ensure he stayed in shape for the upcoming fights; more so because of the absence of proper food in prison. He was sure that his magic would sustain him and his training.

He looked up at the sound of the gate opening. And he felt like his eyes would pop out.

There hanging almost lifelessly was the form of a lady, a lady he was very familiar with. Her frizzled hair was tangled and dirty with grime and blood. Her body showed very evident symbols of severe starvation and torture. Her mere presence got his blood boiling, he very nearly lost his strong leash on his emotions – he wanted to kill her so badly.

The Dementors threw in the body and locked the door again. At the other edge of the cell, the body remained in the same posture it'd fallen in. The face was half visible – the face of his long time enemy, Bellatrix LeStrange.

He calmed himself down with some forced thoughts. Then he tried to think rationally – he needed to settle on a course of action if he wanted to keep himself from killing his cellmate.

After a disturbingly long time spent bickering with himself, he decided to follow Shakespeare's words – "Live and let live." He'd stay clear of her. He did have a training regime to keep himself busy with.

When he was done with push-ups, he settled in the opposite edge of the cell and looked at the unconscious form of Voldemort's most trusted lieutenant. He thought about all the atrocities she'd done. To him, she deserved all the punishment she was given.

So, understandably, he was surprised when the Carrows came in, sometime around midday, and carried her away.

He first thought that they were somehow smuggling her out. But that idea was laid to dust when a scream came from the lower levels. He had no problem recognizing the girlish voice. But why would they torture her?

His afternoon was spent hearing the painful screams. At the dusk, when the body was returned to his cell, he was sporting a migraine and a confused mind.

It went on for days. They never tortured him anymore, instead he was forced to watch as a lady was tortured for three-four hours at a time, daily. He, however, kept his nerve calm and distracted himself with all the tortures Bellatrix had done and his own training.

One such day, when the body was returned, she was still conscious. She coughed up blood and rolled on the floor to support herself against the wall. Harry didn't stop, he kept doing his push-ups.

"Ninety-three… Ninety-four…"

Bellatrix made a sound, but only a gurgling sound was heard.

Harry barely paused but caught on to his pace again.

"Ninety-seven… Ninety-eight…"

Again she tried to make a sound.

"Ninety-nine… Five-hundred…"

This time she had tried with more force and determination for the sound wasn't absolutely incomprehensible; it actually felt like she was trying to say something. Harry stopped and looked towards her, waiting for her to try again.

She seemed to have noticed his gaze as she strained her vocal cords to make a strong enough sound and visibly forced her mouth to spell the words.

It was still garbled mess. Yet, Harry understood it fine.

She, Bellatrix LeStrange, was saying to him that she was sorry?

He made a small cut on his forefinger with the nail on his left thumb. He took a drop of blood on his left thumb and willed the cut close. It healed instantaneously.

He walked to where Bellatrix lay. He kneeled in front of her and said, "Open your mouth."

Bellatrix didn't protest. Maybe, having to go through so much torture have completely broken her? She opened her mouth just a little and Harry used that slit to put the drop of blood into her mouth. He then ordered, "Swallow."

She did. And the effect was immediate. The blood drop had done its master's wish and harnessed its potent Phoenix Healing magic to heal whatever organic it found in the body. It didn't have enough magic to completely reverse the damage, but it did what it could – an awful lot. The pale colour receded. Her eyes fluttered open and the renewed energy and life-force. Her throat wasn't bloody and raw anymore, she felt the taste of vomit and saltiness of blood vanish from her tongue, and she felt her body getting healed and her blood flowing with renewed vigour.

At first she was ecstatic. But, in the next moment, she became sad again. She remembered all that she had done. Over everything else, she remembered how she had killed Sirius; and she looked at her saviour and was stunned! Harry Potter had healed her?

"But why?" She had mistakenly said it aloud.

"Needed to hear what you were saying clearly."

Bellatrix thought back to what she had thought in her delirious state. It came to her; she was wishing everyone to forgive her, she was wishing Harry Potter to forgive her.

She said again, this time with her face hidden in her palms, "I said, I am sorry… Harry."

Harry sat there, still kneeling. He had no idea what to say, or think even. Those few words had straight knocked him off his clear and disciplined lines of thoughts.

He managed to get a few words out.

"What… why… why now?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"You won't understand."

"Oh! Try me."

"I know you won't. You are a kid."

"Okay, then it has to be this way."

Bellatrix felt the probe collide against her destroyed mental shields. And she was shocked! That probe was powerful to take down her best shields, had they been present!

It searched inside her mind with abundant desperation. She had to relive through her worst memories as the probe extracted the information from her mind.

She didn't keep count of the time. After some time, she suddenly felt the probe absent from her mind and the fairly tall guy pacing the length of the cell. He kept muttering, "How dare he? How could he? How did this happen?"

His rage reached such a height that he finally bellowed out, "HOW DARE HE?"

She was getting the shocks of her life in the last few hours. Harry Potter was angry because of something he saw in her mind? She wouldn't have believed it a couple of weeks ago. But here she was, sitting in a cell in Azkaban – again – sharing the cell with Harry Potter of all people and feeling cowed at the rage he was showing.

He stopped storming and looked towards her. In blinding fast speed, he was in front of her, kneeling, and apologizing for having made her to see her bad memories again. She wondered how much he knew.

Her eyes widened when he smirked and answered her unasked question, "Everything. And that stupid Moldyshorts is gonna pay. You just keep the act up."

"How did you…?"

"I have one of my Occlumency powered surveillance drones permanently posted in her mind. It'll do the job your decimated shields can't – protect your mind. And in case you think something specifically about telling me or asking me, it'll let me know."

"Thank you, I guess…"

"Your welcome. Now that I know about you, we'll need to find a way to keep the act up. First step is…"

He drew one more drop of blood and asked her to open her mouth again. She looked at the drop of blood and protested loudly. He gave an unimpressed look and told in a flat tone that a similar drop of blood had saved her life.

That shut her up. She opened her mouth and looked at him again, eyes full of confusion. He put the drop into her mouth and asked her to swallow. Her first reaction was to spit it out. A strong hand covered her mouth. She looked at Harry who didn't remove his hand and nodded, indicating that she had to swallow it.

She swallowed it with a lot of spit. And exclaimed, "It tastes like sweetish lemon!"

Harry chuckled and started weaving patterns in air. A few runes appeared on her cheeks. He yanked her to a standing position. She wobbled, but maintained balance when Harry held her arms strongly.

Then with a pulling gesture, he pulled out the curse-shell from over her. It dissipated in a mist of black smoke. A twenty-one-year-old girl was revealed. And she definitely was the younger version of the Bellatrix he was familiar with. Oh, and extremely beautiful too. Her aging had gotten paused when she was cursed with the magical-shell by Tom Marvolo Riddle. The shell aged, she was stuck in her age; waiting to die when her shell did out of old age. Or, if she died in battle.

Harry sat there, back supported against the wall, silently going over the strange roller-coaster of events that was his life. On his lap lay the head of a young Bellatrix, resting after having experienced such a traumatic day, humming an old English song's tune. The moonlight fell in straight beams on the floor near her feet, like an inverted window. Harry's happiness fuelling his aura and keeping the effect of the Dementors away.

Harry was revising his plan of placing Bellatrix in another temporary shell of his own making to ensure she didn't take the brunt of torture the next day.

He truly did have penchant for one another thing than Wandless Magic. That was – always finding a damsel in distress to save. It would be the death of him, he was sure.


	7. Chapter 7

**Is It Escalation?**

Morning dawned inside the cell quite differently than in the other ones of Azkaban. It was warm and soothing, even though the sunlight was absent because of the infernal fog cover around the island. The air actually felt like it wasn't freezing and would turn into mist if breathed in it. Bellatrix woke up when the soft pillow under her head moved. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, taking in her surroundings. The memories of last night caught up with her and she turned sharply to look behind her. There, sitting supported against the wall, was the dozing form of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and… the Boy, no Man-Who-Saved-HER. Harry Potter had saved her, Bellatrix… why couldn't she bring herself claim to be LeStrange anymore? She gasped at the implication and looked back at the sleeping man.

She couldn't help but notice that despite all reasons saying he should be no more than 17 years old, at most, he was a man of about 21-ish age. He had light stubble and messy hair that reminded her of her one-time classmate, James Potter. The square shoulders were slumped in relaxed rest and his well-muscled arms were on his lap, as if they had been dislodged from their place after he'd fallen asleep – somehow, she knew that one of them was resting on her shoulder and another on her head.

He looked peaceful when he slept, she thought. And a little bit roguish… and... handsome… She mentally slapped herself awake. What was she thinking? This was HARRY POTTER she was thinking about.

While she lost herself in her thoughts, a ray of sunlight lost its way and fell on the face of Harry. She focused back on his face when he stirred a little under the sudden light. His face was lit up in a strange way, the side facing the window in a bright yellow hue and the other side became equally dark under the effect of the sunlight. And… his lower lip seemed to be pouting a little… It made him look so cute! She blushed and looked away.

Harry woke up slowly, still feeling a little exhausted after having spent so much energy last night. It took him some time to find his bearings and the black haze to clear from his eyes. His first sight was a stunning girl sitting in front of him. Her curly black hair cascading over her shoulders, framing her beautifully pale face. He caught only a side view of her face. The girl turned towards him and the first thing he noticed was the vibrant violet eyes. Violet Eyes?

He was reminded of the events of last night.

So this was how the actual, and young, Bellatrix looked? Must've been quite a heart-breaker, he concluded. He shifted a little and shuffled to get to a straighter sitting position. The movement caught her eyes, and she looked back at him. He quietly asked, "You okay?"

She nodded. Both of them sat in somewhat awkward silence; Bellatrix not knowing what to say, and Harry just not feeling like talking much as he was still coming to terms to the new found information.

Finally, Bellatrix breached the silence by asking one of the questions bothering her, "Umm, Harry can I ask you something?"

"Yup."

"Well, when I woke up, I was thinking a little..."

"Not surprising."

"Yeah… and, I found couldn't address myself anymore as a LeStrange. Do you have any idea?" She did have some idea, but she wanted to confirm.

"Actually, yes. I have a fairly good idea. Go marry one of the LeStrange brothers."

It took her some time to overcome the shock of the statement. And when she had done that, she started getting angry and was going to shout at him when she noticed him smirking. She thought back to what she had said and what he'd answered.

Then it clicked. She couldn't contain herself either and started laughing, head thrown back and hands clutched tightly by her sides. Seeing her, Harry broke out in a brilliant smile.

After she had calmed down, he said again, "You know, you should laugh a lot more than you do. It looks good on you."

Forcing herself not to blush under the praise, she retorted, "Well, if you aren't quite the master of dry humour, Harry!" Both of them snickered a little more before Bellatrix asked again, "No, Harry. I am serious. Why is it that I can't call myself a LeStrange anymore?"

"That would be because Bellatrix LeStrange died last night."

She gasped and looked at herself self-consciously.

"No! I said Bellatrix LeStrange died. You didn't! See here…"

She looked back at him.

"… the cursed shell was for all purposes acting in your stead. When Riddle cursed you, he created a separate entity with your physical appearance, all the while your soul was trapped inside that shell, never aging any further than 20. Had I not used the Phoenix Healing powers of my blood on you before dragging out the shell and crushing it, you would be nothing but a soul floating away freely, much like the reverse of what Dementors do. The blood ensured your body was regenerated before I pulled the shell out and your soul took its rightful place."

"So, I was dead?"

"Yes. You were."

She choked while trying to hold back a sob. Harry extended his hand and grabbed her arm. She looked back at him, tears swimming in her eyes. He pulled her close to him and embraced. Years of unshed tears flooded out as Bellatrix wept freely.

Harry was at a loss. He didn't know what to do; so, he held her as she cried away years of grime off her mind.

After a while, she wiped her eyes and said in a moist voice, "So? What else?"

"So, Rodolphus never really married you. He was married to that curse-shell of yours. But the name Black was reverted from Bellatrix without the LeStrange name going to you. Hence, your loss of any family name."

He noticed that she was trying to hold back tears. He rubbed left arm with his own; and he used his right arm to hold her.

He remembered then, and said, "Once we get out, it'll be okay. Don't worry."

She nodded on his chest, where her head was resting.

The morning was almost gone when they untangled themselves from each other.

Harry looked at Bellatrix and said, with a hint of steel in his voice, "Now we have to prepare for the day and many such days to come."

She still had her eyes red with all the crying she had done. Sniffing a little, she looked at Harry and realised that he was at least about six feet in height, almost half a feet higher than her.

He said again, "Don't worry about me if I pass out or something. I'll likely pass out after spending the amount of energy that I'll be spending now. Don't try to wake me up, or show anything to make the Carrows suspicious. As long as I am conscious, awake or not, this place is warded against surveillance and external negative effects – which is why you probably ain't feeling the Dementors. With me knocked out, who knows what they'll find out."

"O-Okay…"

"Before we start, one question… Bellatrix."

"Ask away."

"Do you have memories of what you've done? Of all the years you've spent?"

"No… Only memories till my 20th birthday and again from after the torture began… About two weeks ago. And I pieced together whatever information I got, while the Carrows are trying to insult me, to find out whatever I have done these years. They're not… Good."

"No kidding."

Harry breathed in deeply, cursed mentally, and then began the demanding job of creating a stronger version of the shell Voldemort had created over Bellatrix. A shell that looked absolutely like a decimated and starved Bellatrix. With only about a percent of his complete power unlocked and available for him to work with.

All of it only using Wandless Magic. Harry uttered a few more profanities in his mind before he focused back on the job at hand.

###########################################

Harry had woken up about five hours later. And to his great surprise, using up so much energy had given him about a month's worth of practice and training. He had almost 10 percent of his power available to him. Which inspired him to keep working hard.

In the meantime, the Carrows continued torturing the shell of Bellatrix. To his immense satisfaction, his magic held and she didn't get any actual damage. Yet, her screams… or, rather the scream of the shell, caused him a lot of grief. Every evening, when they carried her back and threw her inside the cell, he would use small amounts of magic to heal any internal damage that might've happened. After patching her up, he fed her a drop of his Healing blood and hummed her to sleep.

He himself didn't rest even a minute. When he wasn't taking care of Bellatrix, he was training – doing push-ups, sit-ups and using the bars on the window to do a passable imitation of chin-ups. Sometimes, when Bellatrix was asleep or taken away, he'd lock his feet on the bars and pull his body up from his waist and back. The more he worked out, the more magic had to sustain him. He more magic was spent sustaining him, the more the magic flowed across his body. And the increased flow ensured his capacity to use magic increased.

The food in the prison wasn't worth eating. Twice in a day, the guards brought plates of a substance that was best described as grey sticky semi-solid. He didn't touch it during the early days of his stay.

But when he crossed the twenty percent threshold of his unlocked power, he could easily transfigure it into edible objects, though they needed to be less-complex to ensure he got it right. He was yet to master his Wandless abilities to perfection.

He converted it to meat or other less complex vegetables, used a very finely controlled _Incendio_ to roast them. Then, when Bellatrix was brought back to the cell and he'd patched her up, he slowly fed her half of the food and then ate the other half himself.

Through all the hardship, the duo passed a whole month.

Bellatrix mostly remained numb with the aftershock feedback from her shell being tortured. She, didn't feel any pain, but she did get the feeling of being limbless and bodiless after her shell had been tortured to hell and into the next week.

When she wasn't like that; she'd lie down on the hard floor of the cell and watch Harry training. His muscles flexed and sweat appeared all over his body in beads. She felt herself getting attracted to him. How could she not? Her heart fluttered when he took her tired head on his lap and used his magic to clear her, patch her wounds and fed her the usual one drop of his blood. She couldn't believe that his blood was the best medicine one could ask for – she had to believe when she saw the effects on her and heard the story from him.

Then, he'd carefully feed her soft and tender food, a bit tasteless but good food nonetheless. She'd look on with her violet eyes as his green eyes looked over her with a worried expression. Such an irony! Harry Potter was taking care of someone who'd killed his godfather and have caused him enough troubles. She couldn't bring herself to reject the care, though. For the first time in her life, she felt cared, appreciated and… loved. One of the days, when she'd feel a bit better, they would sit at a corner and share stories of Hogwarts. Laugh at the jokes Harry cracked, at the stories of the pranks she'd played during her school years.

She never wanted to join the Dark Lord. She was never buddies with muggleborns. But she didn't hate them either. She just wasn't comfortable enough to talk with them; and the reason was solely because of the way she had been brought up – her upbringing didn't give her a common topic to talk with them. She was afraid that if she made friends, they'd hurt her just like Walburga did whenever she couldn't grasp the pureblood traditions she was taught by her. And her fear made her have an icy outside. It was a defence against getting bullied, trampled upon. Inside, she was just as much a girl as the others, perhaps a lot more craving to be loved than others.

She'd seen James Potter then. She would laugh when Evans thwarted his approaches. And wished someone approached her like that. Someone showed her with exuberance of Potter that they loved her. All her dreams were wasted when she graduated and was sent to live with Walburga again. She wasn't brave enough to move out like Sirius did – and, maybe she didn't have someone to do so with like Sirius had James. She paid dearly for her cowardly nature. Walburga continued her lessons in pureblood politics, more harshly than before. She let herself be controlled, again she wasn't brave enough to stand up for herself. And one day, Riddle came to their house to teach her Dark Magic. For a year he taught her. The fire of conflict was burning in Britain by then, and Walburga called her to her room after a lesson with Riddle. It was 20th birthday. She was hoping a party.

She got a hard hit to her head rendering her unconscious.

When she woke up, she found the stupid oaf Rodolphus and his brother standing by the side of Walburga Black. Riddle walked into view from her left side and said in a whisper, "You'll be a fine addition to my group, Bella. Please cooperate."

With that, he waved his wand in the most complex pattern she'd ever seen, and whispered the words – " _Imperio Helios Permanente_ ".

She didn't remember anything else after that. Her memories continue on after her shell's hold was broken when she was hung from a wall with her hands pinned to the wall with steel pikes and tortured for uncounted hours.

So, when Harry took care of her so diligently, she couldn't help but like the feelings she was having, the sensations his touch caused her to have. Harry's care made all the torture so much worth it.

###################################

Bellatrix was woken awake by sound of explosions. She quickly sat up. Harry's voice greeted her, "So, your awake… Good!"

"What is happening?"

"Voldemort's attacked the fortress."

"Why? This is already his stronghold!"

"Not exactly. The Aurors are still present here. The Ministry still have the wards connected to them. And, moreover… This is show of power, a returning to public gesture. He is showing the world his might."

"That explains the attack somewhat. But, what are we going to do?"

"We? We are not going to do anything. I am going to do something… You? You are taking this portkey to one of my properties in the States AND starting your life in a new identity – Trixie Black."

"WHAT?"

"Stop yelling, Trixie. Yes, I contacted my group and informed them of the development the moment I felt Voldemort step foot on this island."

"Your group?"

"YOU don't have to know. Just take this portkey…" He shoved a plate that was used in Azkaban to provide food to the prisoners, "… and go. Once you get there, go to the nearest Gringotts. My men already have everything ready with the Goblins. Your new identity is formal, legal and confirmed by the current Lord Black i.e. me."

"I don't want to go!"

"Listen, I haven't spent this long to get you killed. You are weak now. If you face the Death Eaters, you'll die. And that is something I'd rather avoid."

"But…"

"Go… Please! I want you to live. I have spent my life preparing for this war, no need to waste yours doing the same. Don't worry, I'll avenge the wrong done with you. Voldemort will get his due…"

Bellatrix was visibly torn.

"GO, NOW!"

She looked at the green eyes she had so frequently dreamed of. She knew those eyes belonged to Evans, his mother. There was steel in those vibrant eyes.

She forced out a long breath and held the portkey tighter.

Harry gave her a small smile and uttered the passcode, "B-X-9-7-7."

Before the Portkey whisked her away, she had time to make one wish, "Look over your son, Evans… I want him alive after this debacle, because… I LOVE HIM!"

Confirming that the portkey had successfully triggered and been able to overcome the wards, he stepped towards the door and blasted the bars open. Metal fibres twisted and twirled all over his body as the armour formed.

When all the fibres had locked into their places securely, the suit depressurized with a loud hiss. In the dim light coming through the window, a silhouette of the suit was visible along with a few parts. About six and half feet high, the dark grey armour didn't even give the characteristic metallic glint it should have. The thigh region, the joints, the chest and the shoulder had another outer layer of independent shields. Yellow lines ran across the length of the arms and on one side of the back. On the left shoulder plate was written in a digitized font and black colour, the words – "KINETIC LOGIC 109".

Harry stepped out into the corridor, all armed and ready to take on the enemy.

His first contact with the enemy occurred on the second level. Before the two unfortunate Death Eaters could even fire a spell, his right-arm mounted ion-cannon blasted them to smithereens. He jumped to the level below; the level full of Death Eaters firing killing curses randomly and torturing the prisoners who weren't ex-members of Voldemort's merry band. He fired at a couple more of them before the ion-cannon lost charge. He switched back to a mini-gun on his left arm. Firing at thousands of rounds per minute, it mowed down enemy.

Harry felt a few _Reducto_ 's splash harmlessly against his armour.

With the mini-gun out of ammo, he powered up the short range close impact missile array in the sides of his bicep region. A targeting ring appeared on his visor, with several AI controlled concentric rings circling it – measuring hit chance, effect and enemy targeting possibilities. Once he had locked down a few of the spare Death Eaters scurrying around in the dust and breaking structures of the prison fortress, trying to get away; he let the missiles away. They flew in complex trajectories, tracing out spiral flight paths, for maximum damage and collided against designated targets. About four of the missiles tore out a complete wall-section of the hall they were in. Another five blew apart the corridor behind Harry. And the other three flew, true in their target, and exploded against a crashed pillar that a few Death Eaters were using as cover. The deafening explosions brought down the whole wing of Azkaban they were fighting in.

The pile of rubble scattered as Harry stood up from it. Dust cloud covered anything beyond five meters from view. His visors were not much help either.

He moved towards sound of spell fire. What he found astonished him. A band of Aurors had barricaded themselves inside a corridor and were fighting off the Death Eaters.

Harry changed weapons to substitute the empty missile array. His right shoulder plate moved to his back and the guard shield retreated over his chest to reveal a rail-gun mounted on a motorized mechanical arm. It sizzled to life and targeted at the cluster of enemies closest to the group of Aurors; the targeting guider on Harry's visor helping him to lock down on them.

From inside the dense dust cloud, a cackling, sizzling bolt streaked towards the Death Eaters and blasted them away.

Harry cancelled his armour. He dared not to use any more than twenty percent of his energy, yet.

Without any of his weapons, he looked around. A medium sized stone caught his eye. He dragged it along the ground, not having enough strength to carry it, and swung at a lone Death Eater. His back was crushed as he fell to the ground. Not willing to take any chance, he crushed the guy's head. Dodging the stray curse, he moved towards the pile broken stones where the wand of the man had landed after it flew out of his hand when Harry struck him down. He rummaged a little and found the wand. A redwood one.

Now armed, he moved towards the fight. The Death Eaters had their backs turned towards him. Taking the advantage, he fired off a volley of curses. Most of them found targets.

The Death Eaters were scattered at the sudden attack. The curses were mostly _Reducto_ 's and _Stupefy_ 's. With a bulk of enemies knocked out of action, the Aurors quickly reacted and stunned the others. A few of them successfully dodged or shielded; but quite a few fell prey to them. The ones who had dodged – Harry made good work of them with chains of well-placed stunners and bone-breakers.

Of the fifty Death Eaters who had besieged the Auror defence, only about eight were still up and fighting. And, they proved to be higher ranked in Voldemort's merry group than the thugs who'd fallen to sudden attacks. They were fighting individual fights with the Aurors, towards a side of the fort-section they were in. And they were holding their own against the Aurors.

Matt was fighting a blonde haired, medium sized Death Eater who had a very vibrant red coloured wand, possibly another redwood one. He fought viciously with a vast array of violet and orange curses, showing his aptitude in the Dark Arts; Matt was forced into defensive, with only a few chances to fire off a few stunners in between his defensive casting.

The chief of the Aurors in Azkaban, Rusher, was pinning down a dark skinned guy. The poor guy was barely casting his shields as Rusher tore them apart with his impressive power and more than impressive knowledge of spells.

The others were entwined in similar fights elsewhere in the section.

Harry was sneaking up on a stray Death Eater when he felt Voldemort enter the fort-section the fighting was going on in. He fired a curse; a _Diffindo_ straight at his back did away with the guy he was following. Then he turned to the entrances, most of them in ruin, to find out the oncoming enemy. He could hear the fighting Death Eaters succumb to the Aurors – they were already tired with having cast so many lethal curses during their siege. In comparison, the Aurors were merely defending; hence, their casting of defensive shields had taken much less out of them.

Then he felt it.

Bone-chilling cold. It was spreading slowly. The air itself was getting heavier, almost like a mist. Coupled with the dust still in the air, visibility was down to an all-time low. He realized what was coming and prepared for it.

But in the darkness, someone shouted, "Oh, God! Rusher…! Watch out!"

Another voice came, "Matt! They are everywhere! HUNDREDS OF THEM!"

Matt responded from somewhere on Harry's left, "What the hell is going on? What is it Andrew?"

A muffled sort of shout came, "DEME… ORS! The… 'ole damn… Azka… 'arrison!"

Rusher ran away towards the voice.

Harry shouted, trying to make his voice as unrecognizable as possible, "No, Rusher. Stay in group!"

Rusher's footsteps seemed to halt. A second later, Rusher shouted, "All Aurors, converge in the hall down the north-eastern corridor of the section!"

His footsteps began moving that way.

Matt started running towards the same place. Harry stood there, unable to decide his own course of action. Suddenly an arm caught his own. He jerked himself away in shock and pointed his wand towards the offender.

Matt's voice came, in as close to a whisper as was possible in the chaos, "Come with me Potter. I've seen you fighting and we are going to need every damn wand against the enemy we have available."

Both of them ran towards the hall Rusher had specified.

As soon as the last Auror joined their ranks, a few of the commanding Aurors destroyed several entries into the hall to ensure enemy could get in through only a couple of paths. The rest of the Aurors trained their wands in the general direction of those corridors and hall-ways.

The wards around Azkaban were preventing them from Apparating out to safety.

The first Dementors floated in in a rush. The sudden onslaught of chill and the sense of dread knocked a couple of tired Aurors off their guard. They others casted their Patroni, saving them. But the safe situation didn't last long. Several curses came from the direction of the corridors the Dementors had come in from. Most of the Aurors had to banish their Patroni and cast shields to protect themselves. The chill was back in the hall in an instant. An Auror must've gotten separated from the group; his screams drew the attention of the defenders.

Before twenty pairs of eyes, the man had his soul sucked out of him by one the Dementors, belonging to a group who had appeared out of a different corridor than before.

Harry decided to use a little more power than he was willing to and forced a corporeal Patronus through his redwood wand. It took a lot out of him but it was effective immediately. The Dementors retreated quickly to a distant wall of the hall.

Seeing his immense white sphere shaped Patronus doing good work of the foul creatures, the Aurors dropped their own Patroni and started countering the Death Eater attacks. Rusher and Matt were firing curses freely and the huddled groups of enemies coming out of the corridors.

Barely five minutes into the fight, Harry noticed, in the light of his own Patronus, a dark figure gliding out of a corridor.

He took about a second to recognize the bastard who had wasted his life. Lord Voldemort had come to join the fray.

He was going to drop his own Patronus when a hand on his shoulder. It was Rusher.

He said, "Don't drop it, yet. None of my men are able to cast one now, as they are fighting off the horde of his…", he pointed at the gliding figure, "…minions."

"But Volde…"

"We'll buy you some time. My men should have done away with the rest of Death Eaters by then. They'll deal with the Dementors then; you go fight your fight then."

He turned towards Matt who was looking at them. Both of them nodded and stepped forth to meet the Dark Lord head on.

Harry cursed in his head; he cursed his lack of experience in these times. They would have given him an edge in his leadership abilities.

His focus was brought back to the situation at hand when a green light flashed and a stone exploded into thousand pieces. He looked and found Matt and Rusher fighting a vicious battle against Voldemort. They were using borderline dark curses. Voldemort on the other hand was easily defending himself and attacking with the more lethal of the Unforgivables. Matt was summoning stones from the piles of rubble or conjuring stuff to intercept the curses; while, Rusher fired volleys of deadly curses.

The Aurors behind him were already cleaning up the last of the Death Eaters.

Suddenly; Matt got hit by an extremely over-powered bone-breaker, straight in his left hand. He was sent flying off his feet; and, he crashed against the closest pillar. His body fell down with a thud. Rusher must've gotten extremely sad or angry at his friend's death, as he began firing curses with increased speed and power. Harry could hear the commotion behind him dying out, which meant the fight was getting over behind him.

Rusher missed a beat in his casting under the extreme power strain and was hit by a bone breaker in his left arm. Voldemort laughed chillingly as he was sent flying, too. But Harry had already moved by then; he had fired off his Patronus towards the group of Dementors and had started running towards Rusher. Still running, he cast a cushioning charm that caught Rusher and slowed him down, allowing him to fall slowly to the ground.

Harry had already covered half the distance between him and Voldemort.

Seeing him, Voldemort fired a purple coloured curse that Harry skidded on the ground and dodged. By putting more weight on his extended foot, he came to a stop and sprang on his feet, firing a deadly chain of spells. The lightning speed caught Voldemort by surprise; he deflected the first curse, shielded against the second and countered the third. But the fourth and fifth hit him in his chest and right arm, respectively. A large gash appeared on his chest and arm. Harry hadn't stopped. He had fired off another chain of spells.

Voldemort, now ready for the speed, defended himself properly and fired away curses of his own.

The duel between the two had begun in earnest.

Harry used superior reflexes and speed to his advantage. Voldemort relied on his vast knowledge of spells and experience to gain the upper hand.

The result: Voldemort was sporting three gashes added to the two he had gotten in the beginning, and Harry had a bruise in his stomach that he'd gotten when a flying bit of debris hit him there.

The duel had gone on for about ten minutes by then.

The other Aurors had cast their Patroni using every last bit of energy they had; they were still containing the foul creatures.

Voldemort was getting frustrated and had started switching to more lethal and painfully deadly curses. Harry was running around a lot, trying to dodge them rather than try to defend himself.

When he jumped on a high stone to get out of way of a yellow coloured curse, the stone gave away and rolled away, leaving Harry dis-balanced. Seeing his opportunity, Voldemort pointed his wand at him and started casting. He never finished his incantation – "Ava…"

A powerful cutting charm slashed against his back. He stumbled at the impact and felt his dark ritual tainted blood flowing out freely. He turned and saw an injured Rusher half-sitting on ground, his wand smoking due to overheating. He shouted, still gasping for breath, "Get him, Potter!"

Voldemort quickly turned to see Harry with the tip of his wand glowing golden. Before he could even move a limb, Harry completed his casting.

A golden swirl of energy emerged from his wrists and rushed towards its target. At the tip of the wand, a brilliant white light erupted and joined the golden energy in its direction.

Voldemort could only utter one counter curse as the energy collided against his hastily cast shield. He forced through his wand as much as energy he could muster and pushed back Harry's spell just a foot. Enough for him to retreat. He escaped the hall in a halo of black smoke.

Harry cut off his spell seeing Voldemort escape.

The Dementors had also fled. The Aurors cancelled their Patroni and gathered around Harry. Harry walked over to Rusher and held out a hand. Rusher caught it and pulled himself up. And clamped Harry's shoulder.

He said, "We are sorry, Potter. We didn't believe you before, or couldn't help you before."

Harry nodded and ran his wand over Rusher's hand. The bone mended themselves and the muscles were healed. Rusher grimaced a little in the pain and them when the pain lessened, said, "Thanks." He went and checked Matt. Finding him alive, Rusher mended his hand as much as he could and dragged him to his feet.

Harry turned towards the other Aurors who were looking at him with clear respect. They weren't awed, no, and certainly not star-struck at him being the Boy-Who-Lived-Again-And-Again. To them he was a brother-in-arms, a soldier who had gone through the nitty-gritty fights along with them.

There were sounds of several people Apparating in. Harry knew who they were… The Order Of The Phoenix was finally there.


	8. Chapter 8

**Operation November Nine.**

She landed on something soft.

Bright light almost blinded her. After having lived in the dim surroundings of the prison, her sight had adapted to low light. Now, the abundant sunlight made it impossible to keep her eyes open for any longer than a few seconds.

Added to that was the dizziness of an insanely long distance Portkey travel.

It took her around ten minutes to gather her wits and shake off the whirring sensation in her nerves. Opening her eyes, she still had to squint a little due to the glaring sunlight, she found herself in a hall of some sort. The hall was round…ish in shape. The creamy white coloured walls gave off a cheery vibe and the furniture made of dark coloured wood and the other decorations spoke of the riches of the owner. She looked down and found a luxurious looking sky-blue coloured ottoman that had received her impact when she had landed.

She'd spent her life in perpetual darkness. The flooding light welcomed her, like a warm and caring hug from her father, into a new life.

She took small steps around the room, looking at the paintings and trinkets. The two fireplaces had their mantles full of toy canons, pen-holders, beautiful show-pieces and other small stuff she didn't recognize. The long table in front of the fireplaces, and behind the ottoman she'd landed upon, had a polished glass surface, the see-through glass showing off the absolutely stunning sparkling brown colour of the wooden table-top. On the table itself was spread a few maps and long straight transparent flat things which had black markings all along the edges of them. Pencils of several shades had been used on the maps to mark using unfamiliar symbols and left forgotten on the table.

Sound of heavy boots clicking outside the hall caught her attention and she turned sharply, expecting an attack. She saw an empty doorway.

Mere seconds later, a man who looked like he'd been through quite a few difficult places in life walked in, followed by a group of people who had the same kind of appearance.

What really intrigued her was the dress they'd on. All of them wore clothing that had an absurd amount of black in them. Whatever place was not black, was either in jungle camo or had a greyscale digital pattern. Their entire dressing, and demeanour, screamed of the word – "military"; she'd only seen the muggle military guys once before, when they were camping in the Scottish Highlands, close to Hogwarts grounds.

The leader stopped near the ottoman, about twenty feet from where she was standing, and spoke, in an unnaturally deep and husked voice, "Ms. Black, I presume?"

She nodded.

"Well, we did receive orders from Sir that you'd be arriving soon. I hope there were no complications?"

It was a question that could be answered either in a yes or no, or in detailed words. She chose the latter, mostly because of the man's attitude – he didn't even look worried that his 'Sir' was still stuck in the middle of a fight.

"No complications? Harry is still in that ruddy place, in the middle of a fight!"

The man looked strangely at her after her outburst and answered with a booming laugh, "Fight, you say? Then there's no complication."

The casual tone of the man surprised her. Was Harry really so powerful that these guys were unfazed by the fact that he was fighting against the Dark Lord himself?

The man wasn't finished though.

He added, "We are coming straight from the Comms Room, with the confirmation that it was a victory and Target Oscar has retreated."

"Target Oscar?"

"That's our codename for the bastard who's troubling your lot."

He gestured to his men and a pair of the heavily muscled brutes marched towards the table and started packing things. The leader said, "Okay, so that confirmed, how about some introductions?"

"Ummm… Alright. You guys already know who I am, so I guess you guys can go first."

"Fine… The one with the longest rifle and a deep blue bandana is Soldy. The two similar looking guys packing the things on the table are Mark and Tex, don't try to tell them apart, it's useless – they are the best matched twins with the worst possible hobby, a dire thirst for explosions. The one by the table to your right is Jock; he's deadly with everything that has got a sharp or blunt edge. The short one by my right is Corsair, he's our battle medic and a very effective strategist. And leading this band of mentally destabilized goons is Brian, that's me. I work with mage-technology and normally hack the shit out of security systems before we even make contact with the enemy."

"Oh… Wow! You guys are really awesome."

"I hear you are fairly good with a wand yourself, Ms. Black."

She smiled brightly at the praise from the obviously skilled fighter and said, "Nothing exceptional."

"Sadly, you won't be seeing much of a wand in these parts. In States, Mags are fairly rare outside the grounds of the Magical Academy of Pennsylvania."

"You guys are muggles; I suppose?"

"You mean non-Mags, right?"

"Without magic, yes."

"Well… Then the answer is no. We are Class One Mages. Never got around to using wands, we mostly rely on our natural magic. It ensures faster casting and more endurance. The down part is – we can't use a hell lot of spells. Just the ones we've practiced a couple of thousand times. Your people call it Wandless Magic, don't they?"

"Yes, they do."

An elderly lady entered the hall with a lot of bags as soon as her sentence was completed.

She walked all the way to where they stood and dropped the bags on the ottoman.

Brian introduced her, "This is Mrs. Wilkins."

The lady interrupted him and said, "No girl. I keep telling them but they won't listen. You'll listen to me and call me Sarah."

Brian chuckled as he said, "Ahh… yeah, you do keep saying that Mrs. Wilkins."

Mrs. Wilkins grimaced and looked at her with pleading eyes.

She instantly decided that she liked the lady. Placing a hand on her arm, she said, "Don't worry, Sarah. They'll surely learn to call you Sarah someday."

The smile on the old lady's face lightened her mood to such extremes that she forgot to worry about the man she'd left behind in the fight.

Mrs. Wilkins said, "Good girl! Now go and get changed… After you've had a shower."

She had almost started moving when she had a thought, stopped and looked at Brian, an expression on her face.

Brian looked at her and got confused at her facial expression. Then he realized and gave his characteristic booming laugh.

When he had managed to control his laugh, he said, "Don't worry miss. Me and the boys are mostly inside the mansion only to access the Comms Room, that's in the Left Wing. You, and Mrs. Wilkins here, are in the East Sector of the Right Wing. We stay in the grounds at the Barracks, if you look out of your room balcony it is visible by the edge of the woods. So, you don't have to be afraid of us taking advantage of you. As beautiful as you are, none of us would be able to muster the courage and desperation to do something untoward; lest the Commander skins us alive."

Mrs. Wilkins face-palmed at the blunt answer and Trixie walked out of the room with the bags in her arms, giggling.

###################################

The Order was welcomed to the strangest of scenes when they rushed into the hall where the Auror guard of Azkaban had fought and won a heroic fight against the forces of Voldemort.

Harry was standing, on his two sides were two formidable looking Aurors and other Aurors were standing in a semi-circle around them. Everywhere there were signs of random destruction. A crashed pillar, or a decimated wall-section, hinted towards the mortal combat that had taken place there. They had yet to see the other section of Azkaban, the one Harry had ruined with his short-range missile array. They'd have a fit if they saw the formidable fortress turned into nothing more than rubble and dust.

The Order members were Alastor Moody, Minerva McGonagall, Arthur Weasley, Emmeline Vance and Remus Lupin.

After Moody had a few words with Rusher, Matt extended a hand towards Harry with Rusher standing behind Matt. He grasped the extended limb and shook it. An unspoken agreement was sealed with the handshake.

The Order portkeyed with him to Hogwarts.

Harry started towards the castle as soon as his feet touched solid ground. He hadn't moved two paces when McGonagall stopped him and said, "No, Harry. You can't go there. Professor Snape is the Headmaster."

Harry had to take a few seconds connecting the dots and then he realized that no one else knew that Snape was actually not guilty of killing Dumbledore. He looked at his first proper home and stepped back into the crowd of Order members.

He swore mentally that one day he'd surely return to Hogwarts before another Portkey took them off to their destination – The Burrow.

They landed in the swamp that surrounded the oddly shaped house of the Weasleys. They made their way to the edge of the swamp where the wards stopped them. Bill came forth and lifted his wand from the other side. Arthur did the same from their side. A thin stream of white mist connected the wands and the ward-net flashed blue. One by one, Arthur held each member by hand and walked through the wards. When everyone was inside, Bill locked down the wards and joined them. Silence reigned among the Order members till everyone had gathered inside the Weasley home.

Mrs. Weasley cried freely as she held Harry in a deathly tight embrace. Everyone else looked sad too. The silence was broken by Lupin.

"Harry?"

He turned to face his honorary uncle.

Tonks, from the side of Lupin, asked, "Are you alright?"

Harry gave them a smile and said, "Quite."

That broke the tension and the wall of silence. Questions flooded as Harry best tried to answer them without giving Trixie away.

But a direct question brought him up short. Moody asked, "I heard that Bellatrix was sharing your cell?"

Harry paused for a second and answered in an even tone that made everyone look at him in surprise.

"She died."

The curiosity satiated and information gathered, Mrs. Weasley finally took the lull in the conversation as her opportunity to herd him off to his room.

He really did feel sleepy. Wasting no time with his dress, he just wandlessly transfigured them into his normal combat sleepwear and fell asleep on his bed, unceremoniously.

He only had one thought before he blacked out – Fleur wasn't there.

###################################

And she continued not being 'there'. Harry lost count of the days he spent at the Burrow. He was bored and restless. But he could do nothing. He was number one on Pius Thicknesse's ministry most-wanted list, and on Voldemort's hit-list. Hence he had to remain hidden, in an effective house-detained condition.

Hogwarts term was coming up very soon, not that he'd be going. He couldn't walk out in public – same reasons applied.

So on August 20th night, he went to sleep in a really bad mood.

On August 21st, he woke up to a familiar smell.

" _What the hell_?" He thought.

He looked around to find an empty room.

" _Probably my imagination_."

He couldn't fault his imagination, all the time he'd spent taking care of Trixie – somewhere in his mind, his subconscious had wanted the girl in his arms to be someone else, someone he knew he'd never be able to get to know any more than he already had – Just acquaintances, huh... Regardless of that feeling about Fleur, he genuinely liked Trixie. What wasn't there to be liked about her? She was certainly very _very_ pretty, witty, and lively.

Yet, he simply couldn't forget Fleur… Her flowy blonde locks, her musical laughter, her angelic face – they were etched deep into his memories, most likely forever.

His confusion cleared up when he remembered the heightened senses he'd achieved from having absorbed his Were form.

The stairs creaked and through the open door of his room walked in the bearer of the scent he'd woken up to. He knew only one person used that particular perfume – to see that he was right and the person was there, he stayed silent and kept slamming shield after shield on his "galactic" Occlumency defences. Along with her was Hermione, his long-time best friend and once upon a time, a crush.

"Good Morning, 'Arry!"

"Fleur? You are here?"

"Of course I am 'Arry! Here, I brought you breakfast!"

The strained voice of Mrs. Weasley came as she entered the room, "I was going to do it, you didn't have to bother, Fleur."

"Non! I wanted to do it… How are you 'Arry?"

"Fine fine… But, you know, after all this time one'd expect that with the rest of the accent gone, you'd be able to pronounce my name without the accent."

She seemed to get a little embarrassed.

"I tried 'Arry, but it just won't happen. I would end up saying 'Arry every time. I think its stuck with me and you will have to put up with it!"

He couldn't stop himself from laughing out. Everyone else joined in the carefree moment.

When they had all controlled themselves, Fleur extended the tray she was carrying.

"Here… I brought this for you!"

Harry took it off her hand and placed it on his bedside table. His next words were, "So, Hermione… Why so silent?"

Hermione stiffened up for a bit and then her face showed the turmoil her mind was in.

"I just didn't know what to say Harry… We didn't part in exactly good terms. And Ron still bad-mouths you whenever he gets the chance… so…."

"How's things with Ron?"

"It is nothing. I broke up with him. I think he is liking it more with Lavender."

"Oh…"

Ginny rushed by the room, speaking in excited tones. Harry only caught snippets of her chatter,

"… The flowers… beautiful… "

Harry looked at Mrs. Weasley and asked, out of innocent curiosity, "Flowers? What flowers? Why is she so excited about them?"

And the answer came from Fleur.

"Did no one tell you?"

"Tell me what, Fleur?"

"I am getting married!" She answered brightly, with a wide smile on her face.

And in an eye-blink, Harry's smile went out like a bulb, his face turned blank and his eyes became unfocused.

Everyone noticed it.

Hermione asked, "Harry? What's the matter?"

No answer.

After a minute spent in silence, and Fleur getting worried what wrong she'd said, Harry's eyes refocused on his trunk. He was mumbling something.

Both Hermione and Fleur heard it.

"This is not… This is not happening…"

And then after a pause, "I thought I had more time…"

He slowly rose out of his bed, his muscles flexing as he did so, and trudged to his trunk. He walked unsteadily and looked like he'd gone insane.

He kicked open his trunk, threw out whatever he got hold of till he found a small black coloured box.

And to Hermione's immense surprise he opened the box to reveal a satellite phone with its antennae down. He pulled the long antennae out, created a magic negating field around his hand, and switched the phone on, before dialling a number.

The call connected after a few seconds.

" _Government Communication Headquarters, how may I direct your call?_ "

"Code Eight. Comms Room, please."

" _One moment please._ "

Everyone else in the room was bewildered by the strange words Harry had spoken – Hermione by the implications of the strange language, others by the unfamiliarity of it.

Mrs. Weasley asked, "What are you doing, Harry?"

"Calling the GCHQ at Cheltenham."

That did nothing but to confuse the others, except Hermione, more. She knew that it was a British Agency who dealt with government communications.

" _GCHQ Comms, this is Emily Seliene speaking._ "

"Patch me through to Command."

" _Command?_ "

"Yes, please."

" _Hold on, Code Eight._ "

After exactly ten seconds of warbling sounds, the call reconnected.

" _Operations Command, identify yourself… You have ten seconds, GO!_ "

"This is Gryffin. Authentication follows. Colour of the day is Yellow. City of the day is Calcutta. Word of the day is Pigeon. Personal Identifier is Delta-Oscar-three-three-seven-two-six-four-five-Echo."

" _… Identity confirmed. Access authorisation verified… Full Clearance? Unrestricted Access? Never seen that before. Anyway, send tasking_."

"Contact Ace Of Diamonds, relay message – November Nine is a 'GO'. Equinox Zero-Five and Kilo One-Two has green-light. Rendezvous at Checkpoint Bravo. 'Braveheart' and 'LiveWire' is effective as of this moment. Over."

" _Roger._ "

The phone fell dead after that. Harry threw it across the room and it crashed against the wall. It didn't break, only a crack along the front-panel showed that it had outlived its useful life. After that it burned itself spontaneously into ash, which was removed from their sights by a gush of wind through the window.

Harry looked at everyone's shocked faces, one at a time, and walked out of the room; suddenly looking every bit like the commander he was and every single one of the twenty years of his age.

Most probably, his sudden rage had enough power to cancel the glamour he'd been wearing ever since he had walked free of his battle suit during the Battle of Azkaban, that was what the fight was being called by the Daily Prophet – where a group of supposedly rogue Aurors have attempted, successfully so, to remove a vital prisoner of the name Harry Potter from the State Prison i.e. Azkaban, and have destroyed part of the 'prestigious' prison while they were on it. Harry had read the article, snorted and commented, "Only part? More like three quarters of it!" Before laughing like a maniac and surprising the Weasley matron at the breakfast table a few days after they had been securely placed in the Burrow.

Hermione could make out only a few of the words he spoke. Most of the others seemed to be gibberish. And, she understood the meanings of even fewer.

The ones she understood were – 'codename' which meant Harry was doing some secret stuff and a few others that pointed at something that Hermione simply couldn't believe could be true.

Fleur on the other hand was wondering what was the wrong thing she'd said and what Harry was doing with that small black box, speaking strange words which didn't have anything to do with her marriage or the war. So what was he talking about?

The last was a common thought among every member of the room, and later every single Order member as they were let to know what had transpired to have made Harry pace exactly fifty steps left to right and then fifty steps from right to left in the backyard of the Weasley home, continuously.

No one dared to talk with him, because of the facial appearance of an angry predator and the hint of aura that practically shouted 'Danger' radiating off him. And, after two hours of watching helplessly as Harry paced on and on, the Order members suddenly became aware of a faint buzzing and thudding sound.

Then they looked up and saw two black insect-like objects flying towards them.

The figures steadily became bigger and soon they were two house sized strange flying contraptions that passed through the ward-net with the difficulty of passing through air.

Hermione realized how true her inkling of a doubt was when the two helicopters, UH-60 Blackhawks to be exact, landed in the Weasley backyard and twenty guys wearing Multi-Cams, bearing full combat load and something on their backs that were clearly guns of some sort or the other, jumped out of them. And the four squad leaders had them, very quickly and efficiently, fall in line.

Yes, this was definitely military.

Harry stood in front of them and greeted them, "Welcome, Equinox Five, to the newest shit-hole in town."

Every single one of the soldiers saluted and went back to standing in attention.

"Well… what are you waiting for? Set up temporary FOB here till we secure Objective Hotel. Squad Leaders, you're on me"

###################################

"So, basically that's the plan. Kilo One-Two is running late due to their transatlantic flight. In the meantime, we've to secure Objective Hotel. Any questions?"

A bald guy with a long cut down his left cheek, leader of Mike One-One, asked, "What of the enemy, sir? Are we expecting heavy weapons? Or are they full-Mags?"

"Last we checked, they are all Mags. Expect bladed weapons, and monstrous animals… Nothing you can't handle."

"What of our logistics, Sir?" This was from the leader of One-Three.

"We are using modified M4s and SCAR-Ls. All suppressed. Each one of you will have frags. Heavy weapons available are SAWs and AT4s, take your pick. We have two modified M110s, to be handled by the eagle-eyed guys. Any more questions?"

"None, Sir!"

"Good… Let's get to the preparations then."

After an hour of intense planning, finally the twenty-one men team was ready to start preparing for the fight they had ahead of them.

The Order watched on as the men in uniform checked their weapons, pieced together bits of equipment and put them on, just to check if they worked and take them off.

Slowly the light faded. It was about four in the afternoon.

The preparations seemed to have slowed down. There were lesser people running around and shouting to others about doing something and cursing when someone didn't do that properly. Most of the guys who'd arrived in the Blackhawks were sitting around, on makeshift tables made of ammo and weapon crates. A few were working on attaching something really long and having multiple tubular metallic rods to the side of one of the choppers. The squad leaders had banded together and had gone off to do God knew what.

Harry was sitting on a stack of three AT4 crates, whistling a tune and cleaning the insides of a sidearm, unrecognisable to the lady approaching him. It was a modified MEU(SOC).

The light from the sun was falling on the Weasley yard at a very steep angle creating extremely sharp shadows, and contrasting colours of brightness and darkness.

The lady's face became visible once she cleared the shadow cast by the Weasley home. It was Tonks.

Harry was facing the yard where the guys were trying to mantle the strange object, identified as a minigun. So he couldn't see her approaching.

Yet, when she was at a close enough distance from where she could hex Harry if she wished to, Harry spoke in a deep and level voice.

"Your perfume gives you away. How they allow Aurors to wear these aromas around, I'll never know… But they are sure to give you away to someone who knew you, Tonks."

She didn't act clumsy and fall and make sound! Yet, he caught her. Feeling embarrassed at being caught by a… well, she didn't know what to call the man who looked every bit the dangerous his dress and combat gears suggested he was… except she couldn't call him what she was going to – a schoolboy.

"Harry, everyone is confused by what's happening since morning. Don't you think you owe the Order an explanation?"

"I'd have… if the Order would've been any use when I needed it the most."

"Harry… you have to understand…"

"What, Dora? That with the death of Dumbledore, the great Order of the Phoenix has become the Order of Fried Chicken? Or Order of Headless Chicken?"

"Wha'…"

"Where was the Order when Riddle attacked and attempted to kill the Auror guard and every last prisoner of the prison who wasn't willing to join him, mercilessly?"

"We were…"

"No amount of excuses will really bring the guy who lost his soul to the Dementor back, Dora. So, there's really no point…"

"Well… At least tell us what is happening? Mad-Eye is suddenly looking like Christmas has come early for him, and sitting around drinking way too much Ogden's with a knowing glint in his eyes. Please, Harry… tell us!"

"The more you know, the bigger the burden."

"I don't need you pulling off another Dumbledore, Harry. Only a brief exclamation will do."

"Okay, well… as you can see, I have a merry band for myself whom I am now preparing to lead to battle. And, that is as much of an explanation as you are gonna get."

"Harry…"

"No, look Do…" He shut up and looked at his hands for some time. Then shaking his head, he mumbled, "I don't believe it! I've been calling her that the whole time!"

She heard it, even though she wasn't supposed to, and realised what Harry was talking about. And instead of getting angry, she felt good about the name.

"Did Sirius tell you?"

Harry's head swung on a swivel and he looked queerly at her.

"What are you talking about? What was Sirius supposed to tell me?"

"Nothing."

She said that but in her mind she was pleasantly surprised that Harry was using the only nickname she'd ever liked, used by her Black family member shed ever liked that wasn't her mother.

Sirius used to call her Dora when she was young. Before he was sent to Azkaban.

She was yanked back into reality when a loud voice shouted, "On your feet boys!"

She looked to her side and saw Harry marching towards where his team was forming up. In his combat wear, he looked like a legendary warrior, marching towards his troops to lead them to victory.

Maybe this was how the End started. It was poetic justice, really.

Voldemort hated muggles and went after them. Muggles are going to hunt him down now.

Or, so she thought.

###################################

"The time is Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Five hours. Operation November Nine Phase One-Zero begins at Twenty-One Hundred hours. Any questions?"

Silence.

"Well, operation keyword is 'Vodoo'. Any emergency, you broadcast distress signal 'Oh-Three-Five-Vodoo'. Clear?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Check your radio. We will have EMCOM once all boots are on ground, copy?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"We are starting for Point Alfa-Kodiak sharp at 1800 hours. Bandit Three will be our transport. We are HALO jumping at Point. You have one hour to get ready. Move it, soldiers!"

"Sir! Yes, Sir!"

Sounds boots belonging to twenty men rushing around packing things, gathering ammo and strapping all sorts of gadgets to their combat rigs was heard; along with the occasional shout of a Squad Leader.

As 6 o'clock in the evening approached, the rush became decidedly… rushed.

Soldiers carried crates towards the helicopters in groups of two. Harry watched on, leaning by the metallic body of a Blackhawk.

At five minutes to six, Harry stood straight and barked out order, "Soldiers, get ready!"

The grounds have already been cleared. All the men gathered around him.

He started with the last minute briefing, "So, boys. This is it! Operation November Nine starts in the next few minutes. This is the beginning of our pushing back of the forces of the dark! Let's get this show on the road, boys! To victory!"

Twenty loud voices shouted, "TO VICTORY!"

They boarded the choppers one by one. When every last man has taken his position inside the chopper, Harry looked back at the Order gathered and turned back to face the chopper he was supposed to get on-board.

He walked up to them and said to Moody, "Kilo One-Two will be in for extraction in about an hour. Challenge is Yankee-Yankee; response is Delta-Delta. Good Luck!"

He hopped on the chopper and took his place behind the minigun.

With a short shout from him, "Bandit Three-Zero and One, go Go GO!", the two choppers 'revved' their engines. The rotor blades made whooshing sounds, thudded against the air; and slowly lifted the huge machines high up in the air…

Before they sped off towards the horizon.

The Order, except Moody, kept wondering what Harry's last words meant.


	9. Chapter 9

**The End, Is It?**

The Blackhawks hovered just long enough for the soldiers to jump off; not long enough to confirm their opening parachutes or safe landing.

Harry and the twenty soldiers landed in a typical Scottish glen, a forest visible along the left side of it. They quickly packed away their parachutes, checked their equipment and started moving quietly but swiftly. The night was darker in these parts of Northern Scotland.

A few minutes into the forest, Harry stopped by the bank of a stream and ordered his men to take a knee. The men scattered and crouched behind covers – covering every single angle of approach with their silenced weapons.

He turned on the radio.

"Braveheart Main, this is Braveheart Actual. Do you copy? Over."

There was only static.

He tried again, "Main, Main… This is Braveheart Actual. Do you copy? Over."

Off the coast, the HMS Connotation received the message. The Ace Of Diamonds, Special Warfare Group's liaison to NATO Special Operations Command, was sitting at the Tactical Actions Room when the radio flared to life.

He quickly responded, "Actual, this is Main. We copy you, loud and clear. What's the status?"

Harry listened to the confirmation and answered, "All boots are on ground. I repeat, all boots are on ground. We missed Alfa-Kodiak by three clicks. Exercising caution in approach. Will maintain radio silence till Objective Hotel is secure or some emergency situation arises. How copy?"

Reply from HMS Connotation was, "Solid copy, Actual. Confirming EMCON for mission duration. Be advised, air support in sector is Reaper 4. Call Charlie-Echo for assistance."

"Copy that, Main. We have four point seven clicks to target. What is the status of LiveWire?"

"LiveWire is online, Actual. You are good to go. Good Luck, and Good Hunting, Sir!

"Thanks, Main. Over and out."

******************************AWTTS******************************

"This is Mike One-Two. Hall secure."

"This is One-Three, Tower secure."

"One-One… All clear."

"This is One-Zero. We got Dumb and Dumber, guys! Grounds secure. Holding Main entrance."

"This Braveheart Actual, Objective Hotel is secure. I repeat, Objective Hotel is now Star-Trash-Vodoo, start work on the perimeter defenses!"

With that said, he turned towards Snape and said, "It's time for you to go and inform him. Make it believable."

"I'll try my best."

He turned into a black semi-corporeal form, a really neat trick of the Dark Arts, and flew out of the window.

Harry stood alone in the Headmaster's Office, looking at Dumbledore's portrait.

"Welcome back, Harry! By the dress you are wearing, and what you said over the radio, I guess something has happened that made you change decisions and chose to implement your plans instead of mine."

"And you'd be guessing right. We'd discussed the probability of things going south and me reverting to my plan. So, while things haven't gone south... You've been proven wrong."

"And what exactly was the incorrect judgement of this old man?"

"Fleur is marrying."

Dumbledore remained silent, knowing the full implications of what Harry said and remembering what he'd once assured Harry with.

When a group of four Blackhawks touched down in the Hogwarts grounds again, Bandit Two and Three carrying Kilo One-Two and the rest of the Order, Harry and Equinox Zero-Five have fortified the castle. Sniper positions on the Astronomy Tower and Gryffindor Tower overlooked the ground. Most of the field in front of the castle was turned into a minefield. In front of the entrance was placed three machine gun nests which housed one soldier, carrying SAWs, each. Other holding positions were dug into the ground, in locations where the soldiers from Equinox Zero-Five would take cover.

Snape had sent confirmation that Voldemort was mobilizing his forces to take Hogwarts.

The first blow was a siege spell that had to be casted together by several wizards at the same time to power it fully. When the violently purple coloured spell crashed against the wards that Equinox Zero-Five had set up over the ancient wards of the castle, a beautiful array of firework like spark show was created. And the connection that held up the ward-net fractured severely.

The next spell exhausted the casters to the limit that it prevented them from using it again. But it got the job done. The external ward-net failed, the Emitter Array placed in the courtyard that was holding up the ward-net exploded with the influx of backlash energy.

The castle's wards barely held up.

And then, everything went to hell.

The forces of Voldemort charged at the castle – consisting of Giants, Werewolves, Vampires and other dark creatures. The Order of The Phoenix watched helplessly from inside the Great Hall, under the watchful eyes of Kilo One-Two, as the soldiers of Equinox Zero-Five and Harry fought tooth and nail to hold back the enemy.

Machine guns blazed on incessantly, the assault units of the team fought with everything they had, automatics, secondary weapons, side-arms, combat knifes… even the enemy's weapons. One of them used the fangs of a dead Werewolf to stab a Vampire and rip away its throat to kill it. Two of the guys who'd run out of ammo used the swords the Vampires had brought to kill a Giant by hacking away at its neck after they'd somehow jumped up to its shoulder.

A few AT4s made good work of the Giants. SAWs made minced meat out of Voldemort's minions. The snipers took out the Werewolves one by one, before a Vampire tracked them and climbed the walls up to them. When he'd nearly killed the last one, the dying soldier fired its Glock at point blank range. In his dying breath, he saw with satisfaction as a headless Vampire fell dead by his side.

Voldemort himself was hit thrice with crystal tipped titanium shots. Every single one of the shots were fired by Mike One-One Leader from his modified M4. Every single one of them damaged him severely.

In his fury, Voldemort blasted him away with the darkest of curses. With him, Mike One-One was completely obliterated.

One-Two had defeated the group led by Lucius Malfoy. But they were exhausted to brink of fainting, only adrenaline kept them fighting. When Barty Crouch and his group tried to take advantage, Mike One-Two failed to outlive the contact. In a fight to death, they cleared about three-fourths of the group led by Barty Crouch, including the Azkaban escapee himself. The others retreated to rally behind their Dark Lord.

One-Three and One-Zero held the line at the front of the castle where the main fighting was going on.

And Harry was putting up a show fit for ancient Greek legends.

Using his custom M4, MEU(SOC) and a plethora of spells that he made a show casting through a twig despite the reality being that he was casting wandlessly, he was holding the entire army of Voldemort at bay. And they were losing spectacularly.

Silver projectiles that had fire burning around them were being conjured and used against the Vampires and Werewolves by Harry. Whatever curse managed to zero in on him despite his continuous manoeuvring, splashed off a clear shield about a metre away from him. And, then there was his deadly M4. It took lives of more dark wizards than all others combined.

And finally when the enemy has nearly been crushed, Voldemort himself attacked Harry.

Much to his annoyance, his knowledge of ancient and obscure dark magic didn't help when multiple burning silver projectiles and crystal tipped bullets almost shredded him to bits. His ritual enhanced body barely lived.

To buy some time, he ordered his army to attack.

It distracted Harry who had to focus on the oncoming army – it was all Voldemort needed to escape. Again, the first time being at Azkaban, he escaped the scene of battle. Along with him, the living members of his Inner Circle also escaped.

They took the benefit of the destroyed Hogwarts' wards and apparated out.

Clearing up the rest of the cannon fodder that Voldemort had brought, Harry and his team gathered around.

Only three from Mike One-Zero and one from Mike One-Three were all that lived from the twenty able soldiers that Equinox Zero-Five consisted of.

The Order members and the soldiers of Kilo One-Two rushed out. They saw Harry and his team standing in a circle.

Harry spoke out.

"The sacrifice of our people will not go to waste. It was necessary to draw the enemy out and crush his forces on familiar grounds. While I had expected lesser losses…" He took a deep breath and continued.

"We've succeeded in destroying the majority of his forces despite our sinister and irreplaceable losses. Voldemort himself is weak at this moment. This is our chance to defeat him, once and for all."

The five battered soldiers surrounding him roared with thunder in their voice, "Sir! Yes, Sir!"

Harry roared with equal thunder, "Then let's reload our arms, brothers. Let's join our fellow warriors and step into enemy territory. We'll die fighting if that's what it takes to take the enemy with us…!"

Kilo One-Two had joined the group by then. They shouted with the others, "Urraaaahhhhh!"

The soldiers of Kilo One-Two helped the Equinox Aero-Five members to patch up and manage their loadouts.

The Order helped a little, they weren't allowed to do any more than that. The soldiers of Kilo One-Two turned out to be mages; led by their leader Brian, they healed the others as much as they could. Strangely they didn't approach Harry. He cleaned up himself. A curious question from McGonagall was answered by Soldy, "He doesn't allow anyone to help him till he specifically asks for it – that's our Commander ma'am."

Corsair and Harry worked on a pair of maps as the others finished their preparations. The sky had gone a lighter shade of Prussian blue showing that the dawn was near. A pair of Blackhawks flew in from the RAF Airfield they were temporarily using as base; it was Bandit Two.

As the soldiers stood around the choppers, Harry stood in their middle and started his pre-mission warm-up briefing.

"Attention all units! This Operation November Nine Phase Two-Zero. Phase One-One had cost us more men than intended, so well have to take up extra duties. Brian, you're leading the op. Equinox Five, you're staying out of direct contact and providing us cover fire. Kilo One-Two, you'll be coming with me… We'll plan on our feet. Clear?"

"Yes, Sir!" Brian responded.

"Gentlemen, be advised… This is going to be a tough fight. Enemy is likely to be entrenched and fighting for survival. Account for enemy turf disadvantage. Expect heavy resistance; and, while we'll have I-35 circling above our head, don't rely on its intel. It's likely to be fuzzy. No EMCON this time, enemy knows we are coming… we do not have the element of surprise."

"Got it, Sir!"

"Well… That's all. Let's finish this… go, Go, Go…!"

Eleven heavily armed men boarded the two choppers. Harry walked back towards the group.

Moody asked, "So, Harry…?"

"So, did they realize what I said?"

"Yeah… challenge and response had them befuddled till your men showed up and I had to answer."

Harry chuckled a little. Then he handed Moody a black hard-case and said, "I'll need someone to keep radio contact from here."

McGonagall asked from Moody's left, "Can't we help, Harry?"

He looked at the elderly witch and said, "No, Professor. This is war and it is fought with soldiers and not teachers. Soldiers who are ready to get their hands dirty, who are ready to do what the enemy does if the need be… Not teachers who teach young students, who've taught the children who'll one day become these soldiers. They don't need to see the innocent children they've taught become the vilest of creatures when ordered."

With that, he turned and walked back to where the choppers were waiting, their rotors already making thudding noise. He boarded the one with two yellow bands on its door and shouted at the top of his voice, "Bandit Two, take us away…!"

The Blackhawks dropped them off just outside the village. On their way out, their side mounted gunner-manned machineguns rained bullets on the defenders of the Riddle Mansion. Screams confirmed the death of at least twenty of them.

The twelve soldiers moved through the village under the cover of suppressing fire provided by the Blackhawks. But as soon as a few more defenders joined the fray and started casting at the choppers, they withdrew and flew away. Before the defenders could release a sigh of relief, explosion rocked the Mansion. They ran towards the front of the balconies they were using to curse the choppers from.

Several short sounds of shots from Soldy's trusted CheyTak ensured their safe passage to afterlife.

Brian threw aside the empty shell of the last AT4 round and looked at Harry. Harry nodded, he nodded back. Twelve soldiers quickly closed the distance between them and the Mansion gate.

The gate opened to reveal a few wizards running towards them. Harry's and Corsair's joint efforts, using their M4s, removed the threat. Harry fired in full auto and emptied his magazine as nine of them fell to his precise shooting. Corsair dropped four of them firing in triple-bursts.

The whole group poured into the corridor. One of the twins, probably Tex, threw a flare in front of them which lit up the dark corridor in a red flickering light.

The whole group branched out into several sub-groups and took different route to the hall Voldemort used as his throne room.

They used intel and map data from the drone I-35 flying overhead to track and eliminate threats.

Multiple fights took place in a period of twenty minutes. Four Equinox Zero-Five members died covering and defending the Kilo team members. They took almost half of the forces Voldemort had with them. Kilo One-Two took out numerous high value targets, but lost Mark and Jock in the process.

Finally, the remaining forces converged at the point Harry was holding after Harry had annihilated a swarm of death-eaters and vampires. Together they broke the doors to the hall and entered under heavy spell-fire.

Tex took a Reducto to his right arm which exploded in a splat of blood. He screamed in pain for a while before he pulled the pin out of a frag grenade and ran in the direction the spell had come from. Numerous spell hit him, shredding his abdominal region, lashing at his left leg; but, somehow he reached the enemy cover and tumbled down to the floor. When, the grenade exploded, it triggered several other explosives that he had strapped to himself. The huge explosion distracted the enemy; the section of the hall crashed creating dust cloud and shower of debris.

Harry and his men used the distraction to charge forth. The sudden charge caused the enemy to lose almost all of their numbers.

Corsair had died in the hands of a vampire. His death was promptly avenged by Brian who killed the vampire by turning him into Swiss cheese with his SAW. After clearing out a few more groups of bunched idiots, a death-eater landed a lucky shot on him that destroyed his chest completely. He fell down in a mess of muscle and bones, blood flowing freely.

The last Equinox guy skidded on the entrails of a downed death-eater body, and another death eater took the advantage and fired off a _Avada Kedavra_. Soldy and Harry cleared the room and moved on to the throne room, only to be faced with five wands, one of them belonging to an obviously injured Voldemort.

In a cruel voice, Rockwood AK-ed Soldy. Soldy had also fired his silenced MEU(SOC)… Both of them fell to the ground dead.

Voldemort looked at Soldy, made a tutting sound and said, "So, Harry. Even your improved fighting ability couldn't fetch victory."

Harry cracked a smile and said, "Wrong, Riddle."

Voldemort hissed, "Don't call me that!"

Harry said mockingly, "You're wrong Tommy boy. I've won alright."

"How?"

"I've saved Bella from your treacherous grasp, and now… You're dying."

Voldemort laughed out loud.

"Me? Dying? You've got four wands pointed at you, Harry. You surely don't expect to win against such impossible odds? Tut Tut Tut… Such ends the legend of Harry Potter."

In that exact moment, Harry's radio flared to life – "This is Main, Actual. LiveWire has locked on to target. You've less than one minute to escape."

Voldemort shouted in fear, "What is that?"

Harry tossed a smoke grenade and a flashbang before jumping towards left. They exploded, blinding and stunning them. Their spells flew past Harry.

LiveWire, a worldwide network designed and maintained by the Special Warfare Group, connected a lot of key security assets in an integrated comprehensive network. The deadliest weapon in its arsenal was the three stage Trident Missile System. The facility was located on a remote island off the coast of Greenland.

Moments before the radio message was sent to Harry, LiveWire had locked on to Voldemort's signature because of Harry's proximity to him, allowing it to access the sensors on Harry's combat suit to track Voldemort. To be able to track Voldemort through the thick magic cover was the sole reason why Harry had to come so close to him, by defeating his whole army. He'd never have been able to get close to Voldemort without first annihilating his army.

By the time, Harry had started running out of the room under the cover of smoke, Trident 1, 2 and 3 were racing towards Riddle Mansion at Mach 9.7.

Harry was almost at the gates when the first one collided against the roof of the hall Harry had left his enemies in.

The thermite plasma was blindingly bright and hot. Harry was thrown outwards by the shockwave.

The second one exploded with the potion inside it.

The third one exploded, activating the ritual. The first explosion had destroyed the castle and the bodies of Voldemort and the last of his followers. The second and third explosions ensured that the blood ritual destroyed Voldemort's soul as well.

The Horcrux in Harry had been removed long ago. Harry had cleansed the Stone of Resurrection. Riddle's Diary had already been destroyed. The others all over Britain faded in black flames as the souls they contained lost their hold on the mortal plane.

Harry lay ten feet away from where he was when the first explosion occurred.

It would be almost half an hour later that Bandit Two would fly in and safely fly him back to Hogwarts.

Everyone heard from the strange muggle contraption that Moody had set up and called a 'Radio' the sounds of death eaters dying, and explosions and gunshots.

They recognized the voices of Harry and Voldemort and then a sudden bang followed by sounds of Harry running away from where Voldemort was. Finally, three impossibly louds booms were heard before everything went strangely silent, other than the sounds of walls crumbling and fire cackling. A little later, even that died out.

Harry's radio had stopped working while he lay there almost unconscious.

About two hours later, everyone saw the two choppers returning.

When they landed, and the gates slid open, Harry walked out of the one with yellow marks – his dress torn at several places, his combat gear in absolute ruin and his M4 nowhere to be seen. His face was blackened with soot and dust and grime. So was the situation of his dress. He stepped inside the courtyard and stood, straight and tall, showing no sign of any injury or pain.

The Order slowly walked to stand in front of him. Remus opened his mouth first, "Is he dead?"

"Yes, he is. And this time properly."

Fred asked, "Where's your team?"

"Dead. All of them."

Most of them looked shocked. Fred quietly said, "I'm sorry, mate."

An awkward silence settled between them.

Most of the people in the group waiting for the return of the strange muggle warriors slowly started walking back to the Great Hall. Only a few stayed back to see Harry thank Moody and pack up the radio. He left behind the black bag the radio came in, though.

After sometime, Tonks broke the silence, "So, Harry? What's the plan now?"

"I'm taking the first flight out of London."

McGonagall asked, "You are not coming home? At Hogwarts?"

He answered, "Hogwarts was my home, Professor. Do you remember what Dumbledore used to say about Home?"

"Yes… 'Home is where your heart is'… But what…"

"So, Professor, I am not going home… Because I'm not flying to France."

Everyone heard the conversation… Very few understood it. And only three made the connection immediately – McGonagall, Hermione and Fleur.

Yet, before they could do anything or say something, Harry had turned around and walked away. He'd almost reached the chopper, the rotors had already started swooshing, when Fleur and Hermione shouted together – "Wait!"

Harry stopped for one second, half-tuned his head back, and then boarded the chopper. The gunner helped him up and signalled the pilot to take the chopper away.

In front of the silent Order, the two Blackhawks – Bandit Two – flied away.

Hermione and Fleur stood there stunned as more and more things came to perspective with the last words of Harry. They looked at each other and felt dumb – both of them felt stupid to have been so blind.

McGonagall stood there, trying to wrap her head around the fact that was revealed by Harry's words.

Yet, despite them understanding a little bit of the enigma that Harry had become in the recent years, the ship has sailed… Harry Potter had left for his new destination.

A destination unknown to them.

******************************AWTTS******************************

Ten years later, Fleur was sitting by the window in her room that overlooked the beautiful garden behind the Delacour Family Manor. Her sister, Gabrielle, was reading a book while lying on Fleur's bed. Fleur was lost in her thoughts. Down in the hall, a gathering of people from the upper echelon of French Magical society was taking place. A lot of guests from other countries were visiting, too. Minister Delacour, Fleur's father, was hosting the party as was custom all over the civilized magical world.

It was to remember the day when Voldemort was finally vanquished. His dark influence had started affecting a lot of countries once he'd taken over the British Ministry. So, instead of being Britain's problem, he was well on the way of becoming a world-problem.

Hence, when Harry Potter offed him, every single country who had a civilized magical society had a reason to rejoice.

And, this day reminded Fleur of the young man with messy black hair and vibrant green eyes – eyes that had seemed dimmer and darker when she'd last seen him. She couldn't help but reminiscence of those days – of the very small amount of time she'd seen him from close, and gotten to know him.

But today, she was especially detached from reality. A letter lay open on the table in front of her.

Moody who worked as a security advisor to her dad, had come up to her room and said to her after giving her the letter, "When he gave me the case that contained the radio set, he didn't say there were four letters in it. One was for me, instructing me to give the three other letters to their destined recipients when I thought the time was right. It has been ten years now. I think the time is right."

She easily guessed who was the recipient of one of the two letters that Moody still had left to deliver. But who would get the other, she didn't know.

Moody, as if he'd read her mind, said, "It's for Hermione and Nymphadora… Tonks."

Fleur read the letter after she'd hesitated, sat with unfocused eyes and tried to assure her for almost two hours. She couldn't understand how someone can care for another so deeply that they leave everything so that the person they cared for got their wishes. She simply didn't understand that love.

Or…

She had always been afraid that being a Veela, she'd never find true love. So when she found this strong wizard with a clear mind and a dashing appearance, she'd settled for him. She'd accepted Bill, all the while being blind to someone who loved her so unconditionally that he never even let her know of it because he thought he'd be getting in way of her happiness. Maybe, that is why she didn't understand Harry's actions then… When she'd settled for Bill, she'd rendered herself incapable to feel love.

Only when she, being truthful to herself, broke it off with Bill did she realize what chance she'd lost.

She was reminded of the time when he'd saved her sister, the sister of a complete stranger. When he'd taken time to ensure she was saved from the maze when it was more beneficial for him to continue without wasting time on her. When he'd jumped in the way of a curse to save her from the agony of getting hit by it, and getting burned by her fireball in the process.

And exactly after that memory, she remembered the days she'd spent by his bedside while he lay unconscious. She remembered appreciating his messy black hair, his princely facial features. She remembered truly feeling sorry for someone outside her family; she also remembered feeling happy in his presence, even after Bill had done nothing to protect her from his mother… Even after she'd decided not to put up with the insults and break off with Bill for the first time.

She only wished she'd let her heart guide her for once.

At the instant she was sitting there lost in her thoughts… Thousands of kilometres away, in a rocky wasteland located in North-West Afghanistan, an intense gunfight was taking place.

A SEAL detachment of three people along with a whole squad of fifteen Special Forces soldiers were trying to hold off a massive assault on their position by hundreds of insurgents.

Helping the US forces in their effort was a single British guy, Commander Reginald Snow, a.k.a. Blaze.

His suppressed M4 quietly picked and felled its targets. The insurgents were numerous, but so were the bullets he carried with him.

The other soldiers were no pushovers either. They used everything they had and kept the insurgents from reaching them.

The Jihadis shouted war-cry before they charged at their position, their AK-47s raining bullets. But those bullets failed to find targets. Mainly because of the wonderful cover the soldiers had found behind the broken and burnt old trucks that once belonged to the terrorists. And partly because, such scattered firing couldn't allow for the precise firing needed to land a AK-47 bullet on a target at the distance that Commander Snow was clearing targets from.

Half an hour later, almost half the soldiers have retreated behind their cover out of sheer exhaustion; having fought the fight for over three hours straight. The others were barely holding up. To their utmost surprise, the British guy whom Command had decided to attach with them was as apathetic as ever, as cool and emotionless as ever, as he felled incoming enemies with the same fluidity and surety like he was doing two hours back.

Commander Snow showed no sign of feeling tired or losing his concentration.

It would be another hour later and more soldiers down with exhaustion that a couple of Apaches and a Blackhawk would appear to extract them.

The SEAL Team leader, who was charged with safely bringing back the secret intel, looked at the impossible as the British Commander, codenamed Blaze, boarded the chopper with equal efficiency and speed as if it were an exercise and they'd not fought a mortal battle for over four hours.

If he'd not seen him bleed when his wristwatch cracked against a sharp rock, he'd have thought that somehow, the higher ups had been successful in creating machines capable of fighting.

Their choppers touched down at the Special Forces base.

After delivering the documents he was sent to secure and bring in, he went about the camp searching for Commander Snow.

He found him near the Logistics Building, talking to a man in suit. The talk looked to have concluded as they shook hands and walked in opposite directions; that brought Snow straight to him.

"Hiya…! Snow, right?"

"Yes. You Raikes?"

"Exactly!"

"Says on your chest patch."

US Navy SEAL Danny Raikes looked shocked for a second and then chuckled at the joke. Snow joined him in his chuckling and soon both were laughing loudly.

They chatted as the duo walked. They reached the helipad where the same Blackhawk that had flown them back was refuelling.

Snow told Raikes that he had to go.

"Hey, Snow… Thanks for saving our ass."

"Anytime, man."

The two bade each other farewell, and Snow went to get on the chopper. Raikes stood there as the chopper created a sand storm and vanished into it. He turned to get back to his barracks, he had paperwork to fill out.

 **[AN: From here, the story divides into two possibilities. The following parts continue with one of them. I'll soon put up the other story on as a continuation from here. A sort of spin off… Any alternative ideas as to how the storyline should go on, or if anyone wants to write their own version of the story from here onwards – Please pm me. We'll find a way to make it happen. Thanks for reading…!]**

Years have passed. Harry, or now known as Commander Reginald Snow, Blaze, Reaper, Ares and countless such names, has fought in every battle that NATO had intervened in. Ever since his fifth year in the forces, he'd been consistently ranked as the ablest soldier in the world as per the decisions of USA, Commonwealth countries, NATO member countries and many others - for twenty long years.

He'd hunted terrorist groups to extinction, disbanding and hiding away forever; destroyed hundreds of warlords' plans to conquer; unfurled plans of bombings and assassinations, and induced such a fear in the hearts of the terrorist cells that they refused to work in the open any more.

He'd stopped counting his medals and ribbons after he crossed two hundred of them.

And, now it was finally time for him to stop doing anything at all. It'd be over after a ceremony held in his honour two days later. It was time for him to retire.

Raikes and his five-man team was sent an official invitation to join the ceremony.

He was surprised that Snow would remember him to have included him in the list of invited.

The ceremony was grand.

It was broadcasted live on every single channel, across every Commonwealth country. Thousands have gathered at the Square in London where it was taking place.

And from the stage, Admiral McCoy was giving his speech.

"Commander Reginald Snow. The finest man and soldier I've ever seen, and had the pleasure to have under my command. Not technically, no… He was never under the command of anyone except the Queen herself. But, I say it because of the fact that I've had the honour of being the CIC for several of the Operations he'd worked in.

And, I say this to you… I haven't met a better person – soldier or not. He'd given his everything to protect his country and many other countries… He'd shown absolutely impossible valour during his distinguished service career. And for that we all thank him.

Now, the day has come for him to retire from the line of duty. For the unique set of skills he owns, he will be preserved permanently. Who knows? One day, we might again need him to take up arms and show us how to stand against impossible enemy with a straight back and an unbroken will. We have ensured his wish be taken into consideration while sending him to his retirement – that he be not allowed to die anywhere other than in field of battle. He will not die a retired person.

I'll welcome the very person we are talking about to come up and say something before we leave for his final journey."

A tall, muscular and handsome looking man walked up to the microphone. It was very obvious that he was the older version of Harry Potter.

He stood there, looking silently at the silent audience. Thousands of eyes peered expectantly at him… At last, he said, "I've got only one thing to say: LIVE."

With that he walked away. The audience rose as one, to show respect to the man.

The Admiral offered Raikes and his men to go with him as the only friends of Snow.

They couldn't believe it.

Their Chinook landed on a small island with a single huge old looking fortress-manor at the centre of it.

Ten men walked into the great halls of the Manor.

Raikes and his five men looked in awe at the hall walls full of machines, thick wires and pipes. Finally, they reached the central hall. At the centre was a bluish tank connected to a plethora of devices that easily dwarfed Abrams tanks. Hundreds of wires and pipes connected the tank to those devices.

Raikes said to the others in the hall, "It is a great honour to be able to accompany you on this journey, Commander Snow. I wish you a great Rest for as long as you can… You'll forever be in the memories of the soldiers you've fought beside."

Commander Snow, Harry, nodded and saluted at him. Raikes saluted in return.

Admiral McCoy said, "Your name will remain in the legends. When you next wake up, I wish you to find something you've never found, Snow. I wish you learn to do what you said back at the ceremony."

It was the first and last time that Raikes would see the expressionless soldier show a tiny bit of feeling as he said with a shaky voice, "I'll try."

Minutes later, he lay in the tank, on the most luxurious resting place one could ask for, wearing a white vest, padded black cargo pants, and his usual black combat boots.

Just before the tank lid closed with a hiss, he said, "I couldn't believe everything ended so quickly."

From outside the closed lid, Admiral McCoy and his guards, and Raikes and his team saw the legendary soldier bring out a picture from the right-side pocket of his cargo pants and kiss it. Then he replaced it back in the pocket; and closed his eyes. Slowly, he fell to sleep. The sensors sensed it and initiated the preservation protocols.

The group walked out from the Manor one member short. That member was deep in cryo-sleep, waiting for the next time he would be needed to defend humankind from another enemy.

Everything went downhill from that day onwards. The terrorist who'd nursed their wounded ego for long started coming out of hibernation.

Raikes and his team was killed in a massive firefight in Syria as NATO and UN forces tried to maintain a semblance of government in North African countries. They along with several hundreds of soldiers died trying to contain and defeat the threat.

No one would realize that the threat humankind was human beings themselves… Their psychology dictated their need to fight, to conquer and to win.

Without Commander Snow, and the usual teams he led, to act as a nullifier, North Africa became the biggest warzone on Earth, very fast.

Admiral McCoy died when his flagship, HMS Blitzkrieg blew up in the south Mediterranean, supposedly in a series of suicide attacks performed by a group of Jihadis who had infiltrated the secure aircraft carrier.

The renewed War on Terror sucked in small and large countries alike in an alarming rate. For the first time in its history, the War saw countries take sides of terrorists… clearly and loudly. The Chinese government fell to a tyrannous warlord. He fancied himself as a dictator and joined the terrorist with the full power of Chinese production behind him. He turned the peace-loving country into a country of people lusting after blood. Japan and India barely contained the threat as Xiao lashed out with all his might. Europe wasn't faring any better – Greece, Spain, and the Revolutionized Russia destroyed and captured every single country all the way to Danube in the East, and Switzerland in the South. The actual Russian government and the people who didn't want to have any part in the madness, escaped to England, Iceland and Greenland.

In the Americas, war raged as old rivalries were dug up. Brazil fought against Argentina and Chile. Chile and USA fought against Argentina and Mexico. Columbia tried to balance two sides, before their juggling ensured they met a sticky end. The country ended up being run by drug cartels and mafias. Canada tried to help all the NATO countries as much as they could. USA and England fought a Global war of containment and defending the last traces of civilization.

The first nuclear bomb fell on Melbourne. A thermo-nuclear bomb thirty times more devastating than "Fat Boy" ever was.

From then on, it was an all-out Nuclear war. Dozens of country faced the dreadful Nuclear winter by the end of the first month after Melbourne was destroyed.

It took no more than about twenty nuclear explosions to make the Wizarding world go extinct. In the explosion that took Paris out, everything in a 17km radius around the city was destroyed.

The Delacours didn't even stand a chance.

By the third month of the war, the world population had dwindled to orders of single digit millions.

Greenland was left as the only uncontaminated location.

The NATO had finally defeated the enemy. The UN forces were entering the outskirts of Beijing. Mad at the defeat, Xiao pushed the metaphorical 'big, red button".

Hundreds of missiles containing nuclear payloads were launched from bases all over China. They targeted random locations and flew on.

The leaders of NATO died when four such missiles struck their Command bunker in Greenland.

One of the missiles had found a foggy island on its crosshairs.

Magic itself gave a huge lurch, pulled the person on the island out of the reality and shoved him into an alternated reality before it could explode on the island.

The Earth was slightly disturbed off its orbit by the numerous humongous nuclear explosions on its surface. The microscopic change disturbed the equilibrium… The Earth exploded from inside as its superheated core was disturbed off its balanced rotation.

Within moments, all that was left of Earth was thousands of asteroid like rocks going round the Sun in the orbit Earth previously used to go around the Sun in. A permanent silence descended over the Solar System.

 **[ AN: I can't thank Kathleen Leskey enough for checking the chapter before I uploaded it... For I am not a naturally English speaking guy. Hence, her help is something I really appreciate! Thanks Kathleen! ]**


	10. Chapter 10

**Initial Contact.**

The semi-transparent tank appeared out of the mist that had somehow formed, despite the bright day, at the edge of the forest. And it fell down on the lush green meadow, and started rolling due to the meadow actually being a slope.

The several hundreds of devices that sustained the cryo-sleep of the person inside the tank was not present, and, therefore, the person was slowly waking up – only to experience the worst of rolling rides he'd ever been on. It almost felt like a centrifuge. The slope smoothened out into another meadow – and after a bumpy ride, the tank came to a stop. The man inside kicked off the upper cover, and stepped out of the tank.

Only then he realized he was fourteen, all over again.

Then it came to him. How the hell had he rolled down a green sloping meadow? Last he knew, he was located on a rocky island off the coast of Greenland. And, the surroundings were definitely not as bright as it was at the place he was standing. Quickly he scanned the area for illusions or traps.

Even with his best efforts, he couldn't find anything out of place - only the serene landscape and the beautiful forest behind him.

In a final attempt to find out more about his surroundings, he attempted to connect with the interface that maintained his phased-out worldwide surveillance network. He was shocked to his core when he found that the interface was only sending in blanks. How did THAT happen? How could his whole network fail?

He explored the grassy slope and the forest with caution all the while thinking about the unthinkable loss of his whole information network. He had walked for almost an hour before he noticed a strange metallic shimmer near the horizon. Metal meant civilization. He started out in the direction of the shimmering shine for what was likely a journey of about a whole day.

It will be much later that he'd realize his folly of not phasing in a vehicle from his dimensional-storage and riding it.

The answer to his question about the strange change in location and surroundings clicked almost two hours later. The safety precautions he'd taken before he went to cryo-sleep! The fail-safe system of runes he'd designed was supposed to secure him in case of a major universal disaster. It had taken his wish literally, and had yanked him out of that reality before dumping him in this dimension.

But if there was a disaster, why did no one wake him up?

He knew he had no way to get that answer. Instead, he just settled on the floor of the forest he was crossing and calmed himself. He had spent a lifetime fighting and enduring struggles, calming oneself to prevent panic was as simple as breathing to him. Still… How many people had to calm their minds down, after they've been dumped into a dimension other than his own? Not many.

He was sure he couldn't replicate the effects of the rune-magic gone haywire. It was the same sort of strange accidents that seemed to happen around him; aided by magic, his not-well-defined intent and colossal amounts of power that he held.

Almost half a day of the journey still left, he decided to camp near a waterbody. The water itself seemed to be fresher, cooler and sweeter than what he used to drink on Earth. Whatever this place was, it was very fertile – and not only in terms of land fertility. The whole environment, the complete system of the planet was healthier and fresher than anything he'd seen.

After drinking as much water he safely could, and then setting up under the shadow of a huge boulder, he conjured some MRE to eat. He'd started storing MRE years ago to ensure he stored non-perishable and theoretically less space, per calorie, consuming food materials in his dimensional-storage. A bit tasteless and chalky if left stored for long though.

He took a bite and remembered his folly. He had enough vehicles, both standard military and stuff conjured from his mindscape, stashed away inside his dimensional-storage to mobilize an equivalent of the Axis forces during World War 2. He needn't have walked for seven straight hours.

He said to himself, "I'm never doing anything before checking the D-S… Ever again…!"

After finishing his meal, he decided to rest that night. He needed more information and he couldn't risk it if there were beasts lurking in the wild at night, he can't fight them without proper intel.

So, he simply sat under the boulder, resting against the rocky surface. Even the rocky surface seemed smoother than it had any right to be.

When he was amply rested, he let his comms-interface extend out-of-phase information probes in an effort to start reconstruction of the phased-out information network. The first feedback he got was the abnormally high amounts of energy saturation in the surroundings. It was everywhere - an energy that seemed almost like an alternate form of magic filled every single iota of space around him. Taking the advantage, he connected his comms-interface with the energy and used the continuous network it provided to fast-track the creation of his Phased-Out Information Network 2.0.

The comms-interface, C-I, had connected all the dots and finalized the POIN 2 with an eagerness that reminded Harry of its sentience. True, it was inside his mind. But it was very much existent and even had human like characteristics, to the extent that it can actively advise him when needed.

The POIN 2 was a work of art. It transcended all boundaries, went through every firewall and barrier, physical or not, and connected everything that it came into virtual contact with.

And, Harry was surprised to find a number of large…. SPACESHIPS?... around the edge of the planet's atmosphere. It seemed like a grave situation – one that, as much as he hated to admit, potentially could spark his fighting mood once again. He'd just have to be careful to assist the right guys.

Setting the C-I on surveillance duty, he went to sleep. The C-I kept a watchful eye out while creating modules to put into POIN 2 and extend its usefulness. The POIN 2, though it was still adapting and growing, gleaned as much as it could from every system it touched through the strange energy field – particularly from the local government's databases.

Around midday, next day, Harry woke up to his C-I's alerts. It transferred the intel to him – that several huge crafts were landing all over the planet, particularly close to the city whose metallic shine he'd seen last day. The intel also had the name of the city.

It was called Theed by the locals.

The C-I had taken samples of the local language and stitched it to a human comprehensible form. Quickly adding the data packet to his language abilities, Harry packed up and got ready to go.

This time there was a Wimik growling beside him.

###################################

The droids were lining up when they heard the roaring engine. Before they could even react, two-tonnes of Birmingham's best crashed against the dropship that had carried them to the surface. The resulting explosion took out the ship, the whole droid division and the ship that was landing beside the previous ship.

Harry's Wimik was reduced to a pile of sweltering molten metal. He saw the mess, realized that the 'aliens' must've been really high-tech if a single explosion converted the Wimik's strong frame into molten metal, and commented, "These guys are pretty advanced."

Oh, the joys of going up against better equipped enemies… He felt the thrill in his blood. But, he swore not to underestimate the enemy. After Columbia 2007, he had learnt his lesson.

Harry mounted a vehicle that the droids were using and only had a blackened side as evidence to the explosion. It was floating, for God's sake! With deliberate use of his C-I forcing POIN 2 to gather info on the vehicle he was trying to stand on… He had everything he'd need to drive it.

Nothing as surprising as getting fired at with your own weapons. Again, lessons from Columbia 2007. He wanted to use those lessons to their fullest. And use he did… Three droid groups were blasted spectacularly, two droids at a time, by the twin bolts of red energy streaking towards them at hyper-velocities that originated from nozzle like features located near the nose of the… uhhh, vehicle.

###################################

Sio Bibble, the Governor of Theed, was a very able bureaucrat. But he had a slightly less amount of patience than was normally ideal for someone of his position - hidden behind his amiable nature.

Being forced to walk around the city at blaster points didn't allow for the amiable nature to hide his impatience. As the group was forced to walk to Camp Four, he couldn't stop himself from sneering at the droid speaking at monotone. Obviously, it had no effect on the droid – they weren't made to perceive human emotions.

But the sneer quickly vanished when three figures jumped in front of the droids and slashed away at them madly. Within seconds, the whole droid group 'escorting' them was destroyed.

The older man stood forth and introduced himself, "Your Highness, I am Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. This is my padawan, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi. We are the ambassadors from the Supreme Chancellor. And that is our local 'guide', Jar Jar Binks."

"Your negotiations seem to have failed." The Governor's impatience was showing through.

"They never took place", was all that Qui-Gon said.

The group moved fast in an attempt to get to the hangars which was on the other side of the palace complex. Their hasty retreat to the hangar, in order to find a transport and go to Coruscant, was thwarted when they found their only way being guarded two droidekas. They looked on from their cover behind the pillars as the two menaces patrolled the way, the two Jedi warriors hoping to find an opportunity to destroy the droidekas.

###################################

Harry's craft crashed after having used up all its fuel cells. He walked the rest of the way, sneaking around the droids patrolling the streets. His C-I was now working at cent percent efficiency. POIN 2 had successfully completed all the adaptations and had been freed from C-I controls. It was working autonomously to gather all the info that might be needed.

He must have gotten a little distracted, because a volley of red bolts sizzled past him as soon as he tried to turn the corner. He quickly jumped back and peeked out of the edge of the wall. Two of the machines that were supposedly called droideka were prowling the way in front of him. And, he noticed the group of people hiding behind the pillars.

How he wished he wasn't a fourteen-year old boy. Conjuring the Land Rover and then several CTT (Crystal Tipped Titanium) bullets and banishing them at the droids to take them out on his way, had taken a lot out of him. Not physically. Just, he was feeling a pronounced deficit in his magical reserves – they didn't have had much time to recharge after he'd woken up from cryo-sleep.

Using as less energy as possible, he conjured a three feet long rod of solid Arez, a creation of his own, metal with sharpened tips.

POIN 2 confirmed that the shields that the droidekas were using were meant to keep out energy attacks, not physical blows. Arching behind, drawing his hands back as much as he could, he drew a breath and swung forth. The rod flew in an almost horizontal trajectory and pierced through the droideka closest to him, ripping off the spine.

By the time, the other droideka had recovered from the shock of a rod ripping its partner to bits, Harry had closed the distance between himself and it.

The kick with all its kinetic energy managed to throw the droideka back and faze it. Harry quickly drew the rod out of the fallen droideka and stabbed the other one near its neck region with all his might. It fell down, all its circuits and systems dead.

He felt the other group come up to him. He turned to meet them.

The man wearing robes and grey hair exclaimed, "Who are you? You are barely older than a teenager!"

"Actually, I'm just fourteen."

This drew more bewildered looks from everyone in the group.

Harry had sized everyone up within the five seconds that took them to recover themselves, and the Jedi move towards the droideka to check those… According to his own opinion, 'pathetic waste of metal'.

The Queen, cultured, withdrawn and exuding authority. A bit too much authority… That made him suspicious. It was that sort of authority that you flaunt when it's not yours.

The Governor, peaceful, quiet, amiable, but tad bit impatient. Able person, but lacks ruthlessness.

The Captain, Panaka was his name, was the ablest man in the group. His strong jaw hinted at his determination… Sort of man he could work with.

The two 'Jedi', or whatever they were called, were very well trained warriors who were using the energy around them to certain extents. Their Gungan cohort was insignificant.

The Queen's handmaidens were elusive and seemed to be more alert than the others in the group. They seemed to be trained in their job and were practically shadowing the Queen. Actually, they were doing a far better job of guarding the Queen than anyone else.

Initial assessment down, he addressed the group, the Jedi called Qui-Gon Jinn in particular.

"So, what are the plans?"

"We are trying to reach the hangar", said Captain Panaka.

"And how do you plan to do that? There must be hundreds of guards between you and your destination."

"We haven't got a plan. But we would've somehow managed to get Her Highness to the Hangar", said Qui-Gon.

"Master Jinn. That is the most terrible plan I've ever heard of."

Qui-Gon Jinn had a lot of questions in his mind, specifically how a fourteen-year old managed to get the tone of a leader right, how that same fourteen-year old guy knew his name when he didn't remember any introductions and how someone supposedly as young as him could've displayed the sort of ability that he did against the droidekas.

And all that was aside from the fact that the strange boy was practically absent from The Force. Everything had The Force flowing through them, this young boy was like a blank vessel in The Force – by all means, he should have been dead.

Before he could say anything, though, the young guy had started speaking again.

"I suggest we go with a plan that is better designed and detailed, not to say has the potential to be successful."

Qui-Gon reeled in anger. He almost shouted, "How dare you insult us? Do you claim to be better than Jedi?"

And immediately, he controlled himself. It was not the place of Jedi to show anger or arrogance.

The young guy said, "No. I merely wish to say that I've got a better plan."

For the first time, the Queen, Sabe – the decoy, herself spoke out, "What is your name, stranger?"

"Hadrian Black."

"And, what is your brilliant plan?" This was the sarcastic question of the irritated Governor.

"I say you leave behind a couple of your men with me. The enemy has capable weapons; they can attempt to shoot you out of the sky if you even managed to take off. Me and the men will aid in your escape and then distract the enemy to keep them from shooting your ship."

In the meantime, his C-I had successfully set up the LiveWire and then completely rebooted the system with new objectives distributed to the separate systems. The C-I took up its former duties as Command Interface and gave up its comms capabilities to LiveWire. POIN 2 was placed directly under LiveWire so that Harry himself didn't have to bother with every single intelligence detail.

With brutal efficiency, LiveWire bypassed every single firewall and security and accessed information. With POIN 2 assisting it, the battle tested interface had every single bit of easily accessible information.

The Force literally flowed through everything, it was just too bad for the people who were keeping the data that Harry's interfaces accessed that the interfaces in question could harness the power of The Force, itself. Harry only needed to direct LiveWire to get him the information - if it was stored, it was accessible.

Captain Panaka said, "It is all well and good, Mr. Black. But we don't have any men at this moment except for the four guards at the back of the group."

Harry was shocked. Such incompetency was unexpected from a planetary defense force. Then again… These were peace loving people…

"Well, what happened to them?" He asked, even though LiveWire had already tracked most of the security personnel to multiple prisoner holdings, guarded by battle droids.

The Queen answered, "We are not sure. But they might have been taken prisoners."

"Then let's go get them. Captain… Panaka, was it? How are your combat skills?"

The Governor interrupted faster than the Jedi Master, "Young man, why not the Jedi?"

"Because, I prefer people with a proper rank, or title."

A confused Captain followed the fourteen-year old; leaving behind a group of stumped grown-ups and a strangely impressed Queen, the real one. She had no idea that a guy her own age could practically take over the command of a situation by mere words. Or, that the same guy could possibly have a rugged look that she had always learnt to associate with soldiers and bounty-hunters.

She was a teenage girl, despite being a Queen and all, and a boy who was roguishly handsome and seemed very capable was sure to get her attention.

Sylbe, one of her handmaidens, was also her own age. She looked at her Queen's face – eyes following the retreating forms of the two men – and snickered.

The Queen, disguised as a handmaiden, was standing just beside her. She heard the snickers and looked at her. Sylbe wiggled her eye-brows. The Queen elbowed her in return.

It may not have been a Queen's worthy act… But she was feeling like acting as a teenager girl for once.

###################################

Captain Panaka looked from behind the pillar he was using for cover. And what he saw wasn't something he was having any easy time trying to comprehend.

Harry disposed of the B1 Battle Droids with awe-inspiring and frightening efficiency and ease. He dodged in strange dashes and angular jumps, causing the droid to mostly shoot themselves. The ones who didn't get shot by other droids, were being shot by Harry – sometimes in mid-flight while dodging – with a blaster he'd picked up from a fallen droid.

With at least twenty-five men saved, Harry turned to Panaka and said, "It looks like we've gotten ourselves quite a few men. They should be enough. What do you think?"

"If you say so."

"Right. Men, pick up the weapons the dear droids have so generously given us." The twenty-five men scrambled around to gather the weapons from the piles of destroyed droids.

"Got everything you need? Awesome. Let's go."

The men, Harry and Panaka raced back to where they had left the Queen and her group. They seemed to be shocked.

Harry just smirked and said, "What? Expecting me to succeed, you weren't… I presume?"

Qui-Gon and his padawan, Obi-Wan, gasped upon hearing the similar manner of speaking. They thought only Yoda spoke like that. Luckily, no one noticed it.

The guards, now having their confidence back because of the blasters in their hand, stood all around the group while Harry spoke.

"Now, Captain Panaka. Lend me some of your men. I'll distract the droids enough to ensure their weapons don't zero in on you. You can take the rest of the men and get off the Planet, proceed with your mission to get the Queen to the Coruscant."

"But, how will you get out?"

"We will find some way. You guys get moving."

Master Qui-Gon Jinn realized that the young boy somehow had risen to take command of the whole situation. And, he was quite efficient in dealing with the situation. He was thinking quick and deciding fast – not wrongly either. He seemed to be working with a sense of familiarity born out of years of doing something.

Captain Panaka and the Jedi led the Queen's group towards the Palace so that they could cross the Palace compound and get to the Hangar.

Harry looked at the fifteen men he was left with.

"So, you are the members of this planet's defense force."

It was only a statement. None of the men answered.

"Well, at least you are properly disciplined. I can work with that."

The men almost sniggered at the young guy who was trying to lead them. Harry clearly saw the underestimation in their eyes.

"I will project a few thoughts into your heads. You'll need them to keep up with me."

Complying his mental orders, LiveWire sent the standard operating procedures and basic combat knowledge to their minds.

They all wobbled on their feet because of the influx of huge amounts of information. A few of them even sat down on the ground.

One of them managed to gasp out a few words, "What… What are… These? How do… Am I getting this… Knowledge?"

Harry merely said, "You have five minutes to gather yourselves. We have a big fight ahead of us. And I want all of you to be the best you can be."

A few men, stronger than the rest, mumbled, "Yes… Yes, Sir."

"Yes… Chief!" Harry snarled at them.

Most of them replied, "Yes, Chief."

Harry, pleased with the men, ordered, "Get to your feet. We will divide into groups. Our job is to delay any reinforcements that could be sent towards the palace. The main droid carriers are outside the city. So, we have lot of time and distance to hold them off, if they launch assault teams. Any questions?"

"Chief… We don't have enough weapons. And certainly not weapons powerful enough to hold off the droids."

"Can you get them?"

"Maybe, Chief. The Armory will have something."

"How long will it take for four men to get everything for everyone?"

"About fifteen minutes if we are here, Chief."

"Well, you and your three pals are Fireteam One. Call sign is Black One. Get moving… Enough weapons for all the four teams."

"Yes, Chief!"

The four men ran off inside the Palace. The Armory was located somewhere near the basement.

"The others, divide into teams of four and the last three, you're with me."

The men shuffled to get into teams. The information that was given to them via their minds made them ready to understand what he was talking about, but it was nowhere as efficient as his old teams were. Teams who were used to attaching themselves to absolutely unknown squads and breaking down into smaller teams seamlessly as fast as turning a corner.

Almost fifteen minutes later, Black One returned with weapons that looked formidable and bigger in size.

Harry had only comment to make before they all rushed, "Awesome!"

Harry barked at Black Two, "Get yourselves to some high ground. Two of you… Use your high-powered shots to wreck some major havoc. The other two can use the assault weapons to cover you."

The four men followed his orders and climbed up to the roof a three storied building. The two guys who had the high-output heavy energy weapons chose their targets and started shooting at once.

Harry smiled and said to himself, "Good. They are learning fast. Prime soldier material… All of them. The knowledge is hence assimilating faster."

He remembered when he was asked to train a few guys from Sayeret Matkal. It took him three days to teach them how to pick targets fast enough.

And when he trained the GIGN to get the crosshairs on targets faster, he almost got himself killed. Two of his students freaked out after the third drill and mistook him for their targets.

Compared to those, these were much better – picking up the tricks quicker.

He remembered the combined DEVGRU and SFOD-D training. They were really good. Almost as good as him – he even learnt quite a few dirty tricks and workarounds from them. Damn fine men, those guys were. The only guys he thought could match them was the guys who had given him his first proper real-world training. The Special Air Service – or, the Sport And Social as they were called.

He ordered the Black One and Three to hold the advancing assault force back. Then he gestured at the men in his team to follow him.

"Let's go Black Four. We have got a huge diversion to plan and pull off." He felt the Queen's group enter the Hangar.

He couldn't feel but be awed. If LiveWire feeds were to be trusted, something he'd do without a question, those Jedi were quite the fighters. He needed to find out more about them. Maybe, later, he would make a more focused and guided search on Jedi.

Harry and his took cover behind the crates, and looked from behind them. In front of them was the transport that the Trade Federation mongrels had used. The droids were guarding the ship.

Harry was still using the small blaster he had picked up from one of the droids earlier. He looked once at it and had a brilliant plan. A plan that would need his trusty Glock, though modified to take in the CTT rounds.

Blasters simply didn't have the range to take out the droids with accuracy.

C-I interfaced directly with the blaster and turned it into a timed energy bomb. With the amount of energy stored in the cells, it made for a perfect explosive ordnance. It also helped that C-I had compressed a lot of Force converted into raw Magic stored in the cell, making it as unstable as possible without making it blast immediately.

Harry's men saw him throw his blaster towards the Trade Federation craft and draw a strangely dull looking weapon. The few who peeked around the covers, saw two droids approach the blaster that landed a few feet behind them. And then – a huge explosion blinded them.

The craft blew up from below, completely decimating it. Most of the droids were also destroyed. Harry jumped out of the cover, shooting rapidly – and dropping the trio of B-1 droids that survived from a range far out of the ability of a blaster that wasn't big enough to NOT fit in a man's hand. Sound was heard of larger numbers of enemy approaching their position.

"Let's handle this the old way – up close and personal."

That was Harry's way of telling that they would be fighting an urban guerilla battle. And so they fought. Four against almost a hundred. They fought from shadows and fired from the back. Their leader, Harry, led them around the alleyways and shortcuts like he knew the place from his birth. He had LiveWire to thank for that.

Finally, when the last of the droids were torn apart by Harry's CTT rounds, they gathered at the point they had left the other three groups at.

They were still holding out on the advancing huge droid army.

Harry shouted to be heard above all the sounds commonly associated with a battleground, "Everyone, RETREAT!"

The men quickly followed his orders. One by one they left their positions and joined him and his team behind a huge building.

"The Queen's group has taken off. We can plan our escape now."

"Hey, Chief. We were enjoying this so much… Can't we have some more fun?"

It was Harry who was standing there with his jaw hanging, a few seconds later, out of the sheer shock. He gave the intelligent reply, "WHAT?!"

"Yeah, this is the most fun we have had in our life!"

Woah… He had created a trigger-happy group of maniacs who loved destruction as much as he did. In record time! And he, for one, wasn't about to deny the fun… Since their targets were non-living anyway.

"Well… I guess another fifteen minutes would be okay."

There was a small whoop of joy and the men quickly got back into teams and dispersed to wreak havoc.

Harry mentally tried to think of the reasons that could've facilitated the quick transformation of these soldiers. He didn't think the standard op protocols were this… destructive.

It was the same set of protocols that NATO and many other countries used.

Was it?

Harry reviewed the set of protocols once more. When he finished, he was gob smacked. Now that he thought about it, it stuck him as odd that none of the men questioned him when they saw the decidedly freaky things – like a blaster exploding with more potent than a bag of thermal grenades.

In their respective standard op protocols, or the Standard Operating Procedure as it was officially called, the British Tactical Actions Command, the American Special Operations Command and the NATO HIGHCOM had included the fact that no one was to question when they witnessed anything strange being done by the entity identified as Ares. The other rules of engagement were suitably modified to suit Ares' presence; i.e. to ensure his teammates could keep up with him, they were simply ordered to be more destructive. Harry's standard op protocol set was a cumulative bundle of those three.

He felt that not knowing otherwise might have transformed these men to permanently be like that.

An explosion told him that the men were having way too much fun. Not that he minded – he minded the fact that they were doing it without him.

He pulled out his M82A3 from his phased-out pocket dimension and checked it before loading the .50cal CTT rounds. Securing a roof, he got into position to partake in his brand of fun as the fifteen arsonists he had unleashed blew up and shot down things that annoyed them most. The Trade Federation assets were all on that list – they were the only things on that list.

Harry lined up his shot perfectly. The droid who seemed to be the leader of the whole fiasco was painted in a lot of yellow – very wrong choice of color to be connected to warfare purposes. Well, it made his job easier.

The high powered Crystal-Tipped Titanium bullet shredded that stupid piece of walking junk metal to pieces. Pieces that were no bigger than screws, though.

It was sad the throne room was as high and deep inside the palace as it was and that the Trade Federation goons were currently quartered there. He would have really liked to paint them on the wall behind them. The CTT rounds inside his modified M82A3 were certainly up to the task.

He gave orders to the closest guy he could find.

"Get everyone. We are getting out."

He felt the Queen's ship get hit, that was why he had refrained from sniping a few other droids. By the time he had found the guy to order him to gather the men, LiveWire let him know that the ship was safe and had escaped the blockade. But the hyperdrive was leaking. Just as they entered hyperspace, LiveWire gleaned the location data.

When the men have gathered, Harry let them know the situation and his decision of going after them.

"Yes, Chief." Fifteen voices let him know that he had fifteen extra guns to rely on.

Finding a space worthy ship was a matter of ten minutes and getting it airborne was a joke. It was easy when all the ground based anti-air assets have been cleared off.

Harry had experience in flying the most sophisticated tech back on Earth. Though the controls before him were far more advanced than anything he had ever imagined could be possible – flying was flying. He was a born Seeker.

And having LiveWire, who learned things faster than a single chemical state change in an atom, interface with the systems was something that helped him get past the blockade scot free.

He had LiveWire feed the location into the ship's computer. It was the first time in hyperspace for him.

The ship started towards its destination: the desert world of Tatooine.


End file.
